


Tragedy's Favorite Toy

by turntochapter13



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (If I decide on smut...), 1930s, 1940s, Angst, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Is Younger Than Steve, Bucky doesnt do very well with his feelings, Dubious Consent, Fluff, Homophobic Language, Homophobic Slurs, Hurt/Comfort, I'll add more as I continue to add chapters oof, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Internalized Homophobia, Military, Multi, Newly Orphaned Steve Rogers, Orphan Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, POV Third Person Limited, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Poverty, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Prostitution, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Steve Rogers Feels, Swearing, Underage - Freeform, United States Government - Freeform, World War II, and during war later, it's obviously a happy story :), sad bucky barnes, switching POVs, trashy orphan runners
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 08:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 45,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16698802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turntochapter13/pseuds/turntochapter13
Summary: The life of Bucky Barnes was a fluctuating tale of grief, dispair, contrasting elation, and so much more. A lot of it seemed to revolve around the beginning, with one small fella with a feeble thing of a body and sunshine hair, but it wasn't the only this dictating his path, or perhaps it was in some way or form. Still, his story was not only about two people, so different, so alike, and so utterly in over their heads. It was his story. It was his story about his journey through history. It was his story of discovering happiness and vice, his story of pain and virtue, his quest through foreign lands and the familiar backalleys of Brooklyn, both with a nuance of fear and wariness stacked within every notch of his spine. It was his story, his history, both overlooked and shadowed by the main attraction with a glistening shield, not that he would ever mind.The question was in the end, what was his story?(I'll think of a better summary as the story progresses and maybe a better title :] )





	1. A Wonderful Day

**Author's Note:**

> As for my beta...  
> [Whambamthanksbatfam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whambamthanksbatfam/pseuds/Whambamthanksbatfam) Thanks for all the help and vigorous battle against my multitude of typos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the [Chapter One Playlist ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQLbXGeUHBiwkwyUAnN_RUHcmdlm-1qYD) I made on Youtube for those who like listening to music while reading. I try and get songs that won't be too distracting yet go along with the storyline and pretain to the subjects. Enjoy!

October 22, 1936: Thursday

 

A dense fog, saturated, yet politely supple to his outreached hands, fell over the voices and the people he couldn't see as a result. Before the clouds formulated—he wasn't sure where the people were, if they existed even, but now they were there, and he wanted to see them, like he'd never wanted to see anyone else before, with a sturdy, unbreakable desperation, tainted by the ignorance of who said want was aimed towards. Discombobulation reached for his mind, curiosity fighting it and surging forward to find anything to grasp onto. A tiny wrist came into focus, in his hands clutch, not harsh, but gentle, accompanied by an eruptive laugh so genuine and free, so utterly blithely that he felt his heart expand with the sound, reverberating through his bones and latching its soft fingers around every rib, making it easier to breathe.

A forgotten burden was left in the past. It was hard to try and remember what it was and why it was so troubling. Chants of, "Bucky" and, "James" whipped across his ears, sometimes from a male voice, throaty but smooth like honey and syrup, sticky because you want to follow it once you hear it. Formulating a name to go with the octaves and slants in the speech led to only one thing reeling in his mind—Steve. Other times, it was a jovial woman's voice, endearing and caring sentiments laced in between each syllable and filled within every capillary of the letters, making his chest feel even warmer with praise and love—Sarah.

The feelings of fondness rising in his face, hands, chest, everywhere, was almost so overwhelming that he felt like crying, but he had nobody, no corporeal form—he just felt, felt the steady heartbeat between his lungs, the merry whirl of emotions in his stomach akin to looking at someone who you can't be without—until he heard it. Rumbling like a massive stampede herding through the canyons and divots of his brain. Making his real body, the one in what had to be the real world, shake from the vibrations, scooping him out of his dreams of better times to slap him back into reality.

He opened his eyes, a fuzzy rendition of the ceiling playing across his vision for an amount of time before he reached up to rub the sleep out of them. He looks over his thin mattress and down to the lower bunk to find it empty. Darius wasn't there. Then, he looked at the other bunks within the narrow, but large, room to see everyone else hopping out of their beds, shuffling around, brushing their teeth or getting dressed. The commotion, he found out when he looked at one of the doors to the room, was Teddy from across the hall rushing in with pounding feet that seemed too loud for their dainty size, synchronized with symphonies of child's laughter and screams that naturally came with normalized games like Cowboys and Indians. The seven-year-old's peers followed in chaotic pandemonium, giving their morning wake up call to the older boys on routine, just like yesterday and the day before, a never-ending, admittedly entertaining ordeal.

The comical situation helped mask the oncoming forlorn feeling that had been lodged in Bucky's stomach since he got the news of Sarah's death. It’d been a week, and he still missed her, missed everything about her. She was the closest thing a pitiful orphan like him could have to resemble a maternal figure—and Steve—Bucky wasn't sure how he was going to get through it. Anyone who ever met Sarah would instantly find her to be the kindest, strongest woman they had ever met, and yet Steve would have to go on without her, his own mother. One minute she had been there, and the next, corrupt claws of disease and misfortune, impending poverty and prescriptions unable to be refilled were what awaited in her imminent future.

Despite it all, she still fought through the never-ending hacking spells, speckling awaited cloth with scattered polka dots of crimson—she would sing through her swollen lymph nodes to luster her aroma with jubilant cheeriness, to expel the grim thoughts that constantly wracked through all of their brains when they sat in the monotonous room that held her cot. Bucky couldn't stand to see the jutting shoulder bones that got more defined with every visit, couldn't handle the fact that they couldn't see her for long, especially Steve. He could catch it so easily. It was terrifying.

Every dreaded day, starting when she first announced that she had caught the populous disease, filled with a constant thrum of anxiety for Bucky, but he couldn't worry about himself. This was Steve’s mother.

The stuffy feeling in his throat dissolved quickly once one of the head countesses, Madam Kalrem, came marching in with a definite air of authority, ordering all the lingering boys within the teens’ quarter of the orphanage to get up, and get ready, voice as stern and abiding as steel. He obeyed, driving his way into a sitting position with all the strength his sleepiness could muster. He wavered on the spot, drifting away, back into the clouds without even realizing it, his hands on either side, steadying him with their grips on the cot. Drowsiness tried to conquer consciousness and gain laudable leeway as the seconds ticked by. Unfortunately, the stupor was instantly cleared away and hazed out by an abrupt pain-laden to his cheek.

He cried out before reflexively putting pressure on the right side of his face. He looked up to a ruler wavering in the spot, inches from his nose, in the hands of Kalrem who housed a stern and intimidating face. Maybe he didn't doze off as briefly as he wanted to. From his perspective, there was no one in the room except him and her anymore. Gaunt hollows extenuated her thinness as well as her age, and her frightening pale skin was cracked and lined like a spider web with an intricate design. The look did not do a hint of justice to how strong her frail body could be when whipping a disobedient child with her infamous wooden ruler. The print upon faded with every hit. Some of the boys liked to say that sometimes, when a kid really messed up, she would wrap them so hard that they would have a permanent number label, with accompanying indicator notches, wherever the lady decided to it best to reprimand. Even sitting on the top bunk, the woman stood almost eye level with him. "Now... we aren't going to have any trouble this morning—are we James?" she asked, a sweetness attempting to glaze over the coy enjoyment she found from punishing the orphans, Bucky in particular.  
He rubbed his cheek until the pain subsided enough, looking up at her with the best smile he could muster, "Of course not Ma'am—just a rough night is all."  
A satisfied, unscrupulous grin stretched across her face, making Bucky wish he was the one with the ruler, "Good then," she exclaimed. A beat passed with awkward tension before she huffed and moved away, looking back two or three times to corroborate Bucky's departure from him bed was coming as soon as possible. Her heels clicked as she strutted away, surveying all the other cots in the room, seemingly evaluating each and every single one to solidify the fact that every other boy was up and atum. Each click was like a tick on a grandfather clock, elongating the reality of how long she took to leave and making it take forever within Bucky's mind. Once she finally turned the corner, out of sight and into the hall, he blew out a breath he'd been holding in his chest. He cringed when his sock laden feet came into contact with some loose splinters on the hardwood floor as he hopped off the bed. It creaked as he shifted his weight, wavering with fatigue while he attempted to rid of the bits of wood now riddled on the soles of his feet.

No matter how many times the kids complained, no one, not even Eugene, easily the nicest of the faculty, could help with this problem, explaining that rugs were simply out of budget, non-necessities, a luxury, ironic since they usually didn't care for the children’s necessary needs either. The depression was still affecting the region hard and the mentioning of almost anything relating to the dispensing of money was considered a sin when you were below the society's capricious food chain.

He headed down the hall, rushing down the run-down stairs, going two steps at a time before careening for the dining room since he only made enough money a day that week for either food or tooth-brushing water. He realized that the mediocre meal may have been a smidge more important than keeping his teeth clean. The chairs surrounding the gargantuan tables in the middle of the venue were filled with kids of lower privilege in the orphanage who had obviously concluded that same notion, the teens with better-paying jobs probably still in the bathrooms.

The institutions mucked up ways of keeping the facility in business was to create a system that dictated the teens' hygienic and health needs based on their income. Simply, whatever the boys made was what they could use to buy certain tickets from Kalrem that would allow them to go to the supervised areas and get whatever they paid for. Thankfully, this rule only applied to guys twelve and up, so the younger ones don’t have to worry until then. The worst part about the whole thing was that the United States was so out of whack because of all that had been going on, they couldn't even fret over what was happening within one little orphanage in Brooklyn, New York. They didn't care—couldn’t.

He could've actually bought both a ticket for the food as well as water to brush his teeth, and maybe take a shower, but the sparse bit that did remain once he left Kalrem’s office was going one place and one place only. Bucky was saving up for the Rhodanide he heard would help for Steve’s blood pressure, heard being the operative word since he was connivingly listening through a window as an old geezer was getting a check-up from Dr. Marian.

Every now and then, he would venture over to the clinic and eavesdrop a little, only with the intention of seeking patients who had similar problems as Steve, so he could hear what the doctor had to say on the matter of treating whatever the diagnosis was. Bucky, personally found the act of paying so much to be looked at outrageous. He remembered a certain time ago, maybe a few months prior, when Steve walked into the house with a bill clasped in his hand and looked up at Bucky like he had just lost his puppy. It turned out that the doctor said he had to up the dosage of his epinephrine.

The prescription, as well as the check combined, ended up costing four dollars and ten cents. Steve was dead set in collecting all that was due himself, but of course, Bucky wouldn't even consider it. While Steve began working on paintings for people on the street more often, Bucky took to the shipping docks, lifting cargo upon cargo filled with whatever the ship exported. He'd had the job already, but with the increase of stress for money, he had to ask for more opportunities. Sarah obviously couldn't go to work at the tuberculosis ward in her state, and even if she could, both boys would refuse her to step a foot back into the place where the disease first elicited and continued to take a hold of her. Eventually, they were able to pay the debt as well as the interest, leaving them even poorer than before.

His train of thought collapsed as Mr. Rollins plopped a glob of porridge onto his plate. Bucky looked up at the cook, catching his gaze across the table and willing his best smile, showcasing faux appreciation for the slop. Mr. Rollins proceeded to scowl at him in suspicion. He was plump and pretentious as ever with a forehead that was larger than the great river of Mississippi. Bucky had to put on his best show if he wanted to be able to get outside privilege aside from work hours when field day came along again. He walked down the line, grabbing a can of milk before returning to the creaky dining tables. He spotted Darius a few tables down, and he had to resist the seething urge to sit by him and his friends. He couldn't bear one more pitiful look laying its eyes on him and, no matter how many times Darius had insisted, Bucky knew that he was worried about him.

Darius had been the first friend he had met after Steve. For a long time, he secluded himself from all the other orphans, but after meeting Steve, he began to be more open. Darius came there when Bucky was ten, and they had been enemies at first. It was a petty conflict consisting of a card game that Bucky supposedly cheated in. Eventually the other came to reason, and they patched it up before they actually started hanging out.

The glass bowl rattled a little prior to finally settling on the poorly polished table surface once he plopped it down.

Everything seemed to be reminding him of Sarah, and he absolutely dreaded it and, also, partially, himself. How could he be mourning a woman so deeply when he wasn't even the slightest bit related to her? Steve needed him, and he couldn't mope around while his friend was forced to live in the now vacant house of his childhood, even if Bucky felt vacant himself as well.

Sarah's homemade porridge was always Bucky's favorite thing on the universe. Every time he would visit the Roger's residence, she already had it on the hot plate, emitting puffs of smoke as it slowly softened with each turn of her wooden spoon. She always added just the most ideal amount of sugar to the mix, even with how sparsely they seemed to accumulate the condiment. The porridge Abraham Orphanage provided though, was quite literally the juxtaposition of Sarah's and almost everyone else decent in the world's version of it. It was pasty and bland. Every time it ended up being on the menu for the day, which was pretty frequently, he usually had to physically prepare himself for consuming it or at least half of it.

Quickly, looking around to see if anyone was watching beforehand, he took out the tin can from his coat pocket that he had stashed there'd once Kalrem had left. He hid it under his bed the day prior. One of the dock managers that he'd worked with that day had pitied him once Bucky told him about his basic food rations. He went into his office and came back out with a can of beans. Bucky insisted that he was fine without it, but the man refused to allow him to get back to work without eating some of it.

So he did.

Eventually, he scooped out a little more than half of the contents within and he stored the other half the best he could with the now detached top. Once work had finished up, he walked over to Steve's and gave him the rest, though a sense of de já vu washed over him as Steve took a solid ten minutes of convincing before he actually ate it, just like Bucky had done at the dock.

Now, he was scraping as much of the porridge into the tin can as possible without making it look more suspicious than it probably already was. He almost jumped completely out of his seat when someone came up behind him just when was about to pick up the last bit of the guck still left in the bowl. "I take it Steve's low on necessities?" Darius voiced, slipping one leg into the slot between the bench and table after the other.  
"Jesus Darius—could you at least come up from the front next time so I know you're not that near-future chrome-dome over there?" Bucky snapped, shoving the can into its original home in one of the inner pockets of his flimsy jacket. He looked up at Darius, the latter schooling his best parental guise as he watched his friends heart-rate settle again.  
"Seems like someone's missing the moxie I love so much," Darius replied, obviously trying to lighten the mood, but his façade of comical relief was peeling enough to show the concern behind his eyes. Bucky simply leveled the other with a glare before resting his aching head in his hands, supported by his elbows, cemented to the table's surface.  
"Please just—don’t do that again, not this week," he mumbled through the hands covering his face. He silently prayed that Darius could hear his plea because he couldn't handle lifting his head to speak clearly with how exhausted he felt.  
"Don't bust your caps. I've gotcha bud." Darius said, squeezing Bucky's shoulder in reassurance.  
He didn't miss the sympathetic sigh that expelled from Darius and prepared for the inevitable. "You know, I could buy some extra tickets for you this week if you wan-"  
"Dar, no."  
"No, no, hear me out. It would only be for this week. The factory just gave me a raise. I could-"  
"I said no!" Bucky shot back, finally raising his head as he saw everyone in the vicinity looking at his spur of anger. He didn’t realize he had shouted that loud. He shrunk in on himself as he whispered a tiny "sorry". He didn't even look at Darius when he said it out of guilt.  
"I—It’s okay Bee."

It wasn't, but Bucky couldn't verbally state it for some reason. Now everyone was watching curiously. He was beginning to feel suffocated. He hated it. He rushed out of the room before anyone could stop him, but his escape was cut short when he knocked straight into Gilbert, one of the larger and meaner kids at the orphanage. The impact felt akin to slamming into a brick wall.

"What're you doin' runnin' out like that Buchanan?" he asked snidely as he grabbed ahold of Bucky. Just like Darius, Bucky had rivaled with Gilbert in the same card game, yet unlike Darius, Gilly never got over the fact that Bucky had won. It was a stupid reason to hate a person, but for Gilbert, rage was a natural part of his personality, a part that Bucky really didn't feel like seeing at the moment.

He ripped his arm out of Gilbert's hold and ran up the stairs as he yelled, "Gotta get ready for work Gilly. Maybe catch up with me after I get back." and then he was up the stairs and shrugging on the warmest clothes he owned, which were the jacket on his back, covering a moth-eaten and loose-fitting collared shirt with wrinkled thick wool trousers supported by suspenders that he gained from barter of cigarettes at the shipping quarters with another worker. The only sturdy cotton wool socks he had were stretched to above his calves, underneath his pants and burgundy moccasins. He trudged back down the stairs, this time not as fast and warier, just in case Gilly or even Darius decided to hamper him.

He wasn't certain whether the silence of the outside world was because everyone had seemingly finished their pedestrian breakfast or because Bucky's hammering heart, overwhelmed emotionally and physically, was pumping so loud in his ears, that every other minuscule measure of sound waves failed in comparison. His hand was on the brass knob, and it was halfway through its function when he heard Kalrem say his name teasingly from somewhere in the vicinity. Without even looking, he was sure he could imagine the grin plastered on the old bat's face, an excitement to admonish her favorite nuisance.

"Why are you leaving so soon? If I'm correct, which I believe to be so, you don't start your shift until noon," Kalrem stated, blatantly obvious that she was just attempting to make him snap his cap, but he wouldn't crack that easily. Being an orphan came with finding a niche for patience. Disappointment had become a normalized occupant in his life. He was born with nothing, so he didn't expect much else, out of nature, or people themselves. Gilly, being one of those wretched people, with his constant jibes and physical throws, was also a good contributor to his growth in the field of stoicism as well.

Still, Kalrem was right. He didn't have to go to work for hours. How could he excuse himself for leaving without stating the likes of Gilbert's unwanted company? If he explained that dilemma, she would surely cement him to the orphanage, maybe even schedule him to do his chores with the bully, an odd paradox to occur when in the confines of orphanage faculty but normal to Kalrem’s behavior, singularly.

Eventually, he realized that he was going to have to turn around and confront the mistress with eye contact. When she finally came into view, he was shocked at how close she actually was, more or less three feet away from him. He took an involuntary, subconscious step backward until his backside was pressed against the spruce of the door behind him. When she still wasn't in a corporeal state within his vision, he suspected that perhaps she had taken indefinite residence on the middle of the deck where the two pairs of stairs met at the top of the second floor, parallel yet so far away from the doorway, wracking off cadences that seemed so hollow and empty, except for the sheer pleasure of possible punishments upon Bucky, but maybe that was just her voice in general. He wasn't surprised. He tried not to shrink too far into the door with her intimidating height towering over him and creating an ungodly shadow to envelop him as though it was suffocating tar, spilling out over everything around him. 

It wasn't as though he didn't like that she was the one bossing him around. Madam Kalrem was just icy. She was vindictive and nefarious at heart. He had tried to find some hint of softness in the core of her ultimate being, some debris of past pureness, but as the years went on, he began to conclude that maybe she was just always cold and dark. Not all assumptions, or wishes actually, executed themselves like the serendipities Bucky always hoped for. 

He stammered as he tried his best to come up with something somewhat reliable to tell her, just so he could get out as soon as he could.

"Oh- uh, Mr. Fulherty from Thirty-Second Street asked for my s-services in trimming his garden, Ma’am. You know, that beautiful Victorian with the blue shudders?" He allowed the lie to spill from his lips as soon as the memory of the man truly asking him for such assistance only days ago, when he was even more of a mess than he was today, had entered the consciously enterable portion of his mind. Of course, at the time, he didn’t feel fit to do anything less than mandatory labor. Maybe he hadn't given the position away to someone else yet. Bucky could still come back with a palpable source of true information.  
Kalrem narrowed her eyes at him, jutting her prominent chin upwards and making all of her features dance in terrifying shades as the plane of light from behind her spilled over protruding slants on her face while the concaves remained ignorant to the luminescence, finally settling when she stilled. More than what could be thought to be a normal amount of beats past before the woman decided to speak again, leaving Bucky in a dubious state for the time being. "Alright then," she started. He let out a tremulous breath of relief. Usually, he was sure of himself. He held himself in a self-assured way, cocky even sometimes. He could defend Steve from any bully the other couldn't handle, which was almost every single one. He could load tons upon tons of cargo from ships, but she had a kind of air that just got to him. "You shall go, but heed the curfew tonight, or I'll have to send you to Master Manchester," the final words were spoken with a conceded smirk playing of the ends of her lips, because Bucky knew that she knew that he only held a persistently stronger rancor for one person besides herself, and that was Barnebus Manchester, the head of the Abraham Orphanage. While she had her resilient ruler, he had a wooden paddle, five times thicker and wider than the, in comparison, flimsy twig Kalrem held by her side. He even had duplicates of said paddle, four if Bucky's memory served him right.  
"Of course ma'am," he muttered out eventually, waiting for the lady to back up. She looked as though she were considering him—for what—his probably unabashed lying skills—he didn't know, but it took her forever to actually step back and allow him to turn around.

He slipped outside as fast as he could and gladly took the frigid October air into his lungs. The crisp foreshadowing of snow hung in the air. His legs automatically set the path for Thirty-Second Street.

All around him, kids from other houses were running around, their parents chasing after them with jackets and hats, anything to protect them from the chilly weather as they played. Bucky waved at Lila, a five-year-old who lived a few buildings down from the orphanage. She was always outside and constantly smiling like crazy with her blond pigtails and adorable dresses. When they had initially met, she was only two. She ran out onto the road before her mother, speaking with who could be presumed as a friend on her front steps, could even process the fact that her daughter was gone. The girl was lucky enough to be in plain sight of Bucky, who was walking home from work at the time, thus giving him a chance to see a vehicle rushing up the road and right in its path, Lila. He ran out an grabbed her before leading both himself and her to the curb, Lila's mom on the verge of tears as she ran up and thanked him and hugged her daughter with such a strong vigor as to possibly burst the child's lungs. From then on, he had always waved at Petunia, Lila's mother, whenever he saw her and he played hopscotch, Lila's absolute favorite game, with the girl herself when he had the time.

She giggled as he passed before returning to playing with the tiny baby doll in her hands. Though he wished to stay and talk, maybe even braid her hair like she asked him to do a month ago at which time Petunia taught him how to properly do so, he had to get to Mr. Fulherty's house. The chances of work still being open for profit was slim to none, but even though his main objective was to solidify a true alibi, he needed all the extra opportunities he could find.

The inceptive request was asked of him only a day after he found out about Sarah's death. Miscellaneous reasons, denials, stresses, as well as other problems were supplementing in his brain throughout that formidable day, leaving his thought process dreary and fogged to the point that everything felt almost numb.

Thinking about the present troubles, primary anxiety of how much cash he should make in the next few days ate away at him slowly, sending his head to ideas of having to starve for a week, having Steve starve for a week.

The age gap was pronounced enough that people would normally believe a nineteen-year-old to be making more money than a sixteen-year-old, should be the one supporting others, but Steve and Bucky weren't any normal case. Steve had a job; it was good. He was paid pretty well, but he couldn't go every weekday like they wished. Still, they never sequestered him because of how talented he was. He worked at a theater, the one downtown, making posters for the plays and stuff that would be playing that week and also sometimes tagging in for janitorial tasks for a little extra pay.

Bucky felt so proud of his friend when he announced his new position. They went out to an old bar nearby that weakened with age restriction patrol once the depression had hit, leaving it easy for both of them to just walk in, no questions asked. There were only a few other occupants within, two with their heads sunk down, supported by wobbling shoulders stilted by drunkenly feeble elbows; the farmers. They were distinguishable by their dusty flannel and denim overalls, sometimes a straw hat when they were coming deep from within the rural venues. Usually, they were caught perusing within banks, trying to find some kind of financial stability that hindered the abiding troubles the dust bowl epidemics repercussions had to offer Oklahoma and Texas. After all, New York was the apple of dreamers. It was hard not to pity them, venturing all the way to big urban areas in the hope of a new job, new monopolies to invest the last of their savings in, but big cities were just as screwed. That's why they usually had their second destination be the pubs. The third and final person within, excluding the barman himself, was a town drunk who frequented the local bars since his love had lost her life in childbirth, ending both her and the baby's heart.

Despite the sullen aroma, they still held their celebratory festivities with the best whiskey the end of the prohibition had to offer, using the remaining of their salaries from that week, still staying respectfully quiet for the other inhabitants in range. Steve proceeded to get so loaded that he could barely hold his tiny frame up.

Tiny framed Stevie was a tough Stevie still. He caught a guy touching a girl on a street corner on their way home, and while Bucky decided it wise to holler out and see if everything was alright first, drunk and tiny framed Stevie ran over and shoved the guy into the nearest brick wall almost on sight. The catalyst of the unknown man's own doing seemed to be the key to revealing his truly derogative side, the side in which decided to start beating on tiny framed Stevie regardless of his tiny frame until Bucky interfered. The woman in question ran away, most definitely solidifying that theory they were indeed not simply a couple openly frisky with their public affection.

Needless to say, when Sarah heard the front door knob jiggle before the whole contraption creaked wide open that afternoon, and she peered out from the kitchen where she had been preparing a lovely concoction of baked ham mixed with thick chicken broth, she wasn't expecting to see an eighteen-year-old Steve and fifteen-year-old Bucky waltzing in with proud shiners on their faces as they laughed hysterically about the day's escapade. Sarah had decided it best to reprimand them once they were sober, even if she was fuming and watched as they inevitably collapsed on Steve's bed, mouths agape, Bucky's lungs showcasing a steady breath while Steve's were labored.

Bucky was banned from the house for two weeks after that, considering it was him who got the idea to go to the bar in the first place, yet Steve protested that he chose to drink that much, that Bucky tried to stop him.

_I'm sorry James honey, but you have to learn to be more responsible, and if I have to prohibit you from seeing Steve for two weeks to polish that in your brain, so be it._

Bucky tried not to have a full on panic attack that terrible, hungover morning as he acquiesced the demand ever so quietly.

The rule only lasted for one week in an ironic collateral change of events when Steve caught Scarlet Fever, and Bucky refused to leave when he had come over for his daily pleas of seeing Steve for only a minute to find out about the contraction. Their codependency overpowered Sarah's previous vexation.

Even with all of his good fortune because of those blessed, articulate hands Steve had, it didn't cover all of the necessities of life, so the job at the theater left him to wallow in still marginal poverty, especially in cold months when he couldn't find people to draw on the streets for change.

Before Bucky realized it, he was standing on Thirty-Second Street in front of a grandiose Victorian house laden with the effects of age. It's soft yellow columns held up the weight that came with every extravagant decor on top of them. The belvedere's windows glistened at the very top. Intricately shaped cornice brackets were held between the fascia and beam like delicate yet sturdy drapes, every other two extenuating the tiny pair of windows between them, trimmed with the same navy as the shudders. The house was a rainbow peeking out after a gloomy storm. He walked up the light blue stairs and knocked on the front door. As he waited, he looked behind him, shocked at the juxtaposition between the brightness pulsing off of the house and the melancholy aura that came with all of the other streets in Brooklyn. It made him breathe a little lighter before his stomach dropped in the realization that it could never last forever.

He had been trying to shake the feeling for the past few days, the notion that no one lives forever, reinforced by Sarah's untimely death. Anatomical science was the taboo that banned that profound cogitation. It's not like he didn't know death was a thing before her, but it never seemed to be real and a weird type of way until someone he actually knew suffered the fate. It wasn't like how his parents apparently died. He never knew them, and you can't miss something you never had.

"Why, hello James," Diana Fulherty, Mr. Fulherty's granddaughter, exclaimed as she opened the door.  
Bucky smiled at her as he fixed his posture. "Hey Di, is your grandpa home?"  
"Actually, he's in the back right now, but I could go get him."  
"If it isn't too much trouble." he replied, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. Diana smirked at him first before waltzing away. The brief period of quietness enticed Bucky's curiosity to send his eyes across what he could see from the door frame. A chandelier lit up the lustered interior, the hallway’s floor covered by a rug filled to the brim with complicated patterns while tassels trimmed the edges. He was observing the way the light was laying itself on the ornate frame of a mirror on the hallway wall to his left when a person appeared within the confines of said reflective glass. Mr. Fulherty was smiling at Bucky as he wiped his sweaty forehead with a cloth, Diana wavering in the background. His hair was snow white, but his skin was tan from years of work outside and what could be hereditary genes considering he was even that way in the cold months. "Nice seein' ya' James," the older man nodded to him.  
"And you, sir."  
"Is everything alright?"  
"Yah, for the most part. I was just curious as to if that job with the garden grooming is still up for chatting?"  
A voice interrupted Mr. Fulherty when he was about to say something back, and a boy entered the foyer. "Mr. Fulherty where do you want the trimmings to go? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interject."  
Bucky was almost certain that he recognized the peer as a kid from school, but since the orphanage could only have the kids go every other week now, it was hard to remember correctly. He looked to be at least eighteen, short-cropped red hair and a strong build. Still, Bucky let out the last anticipatory breath he had managed to hold onto.  
"Uh, no you're fine Peter. Just make a pile, and we can see what we can do with 'em after." With that, Peter went off again, out of sight. Mr. Fulherty turned back around with a tight-lipped impression of disappointment. It looked like he was just as let down as Bucky, irritated that he didn't get to tell the latter before it got revealed on its own. "Welp, I guess that answers it. I'm real sorry James."  
Bucky attempted to keep the bitterness contained and out of sight as he spoke again. "Hey, it's not a big deal. I should'a taken you up on the offer when ya first asked me."  
There it was again, another huff from the elderly. Maybe it wasn't disappointment. Could it be pity? That would be so much worse though. He'd already gotten enough from Darius this morning. "Uh, hey Diana, could you please be a peach and give me and James a second?" Well, that couldn't be good.  
"Yah, of course," Diana countered, finally rising from the only shadowy portion to be seen in the sun bathed foyer. She walked up to Bucky with a poised swagger, a coyly suggestive grin on her lips as she nonchalantly dusted off a spec of dirt on one of his lapels while she spoke, "Abysinnia again soon Jamie, I hope." She was a few years old than Bucky, but it didn't stop her from making him flustered whenever she could crack his well-trained facade of a charmingly confident decorum. It was all jokes, and they both knew it. She'd been going steady with a guy for four years now. It was just a little hoax of theirs, even if they weren't the best of friends, they were mutual enough to keep it going, for her to keep it going really.  
  
When she had finally walked up a pair of their many stairs cases, Mr. Fulherty went on. "So... how's that Rogers kid holdin' up? Not the best I s'pose."  
Yes, it was indeed pity on that face earlier, but at least it was directed towards Steve this time. That's something he can get behind.  
"Yah—he's getting through it I guess, keeps on puttin’ up a sturdy face though, like I don’t know he’s hurting. He just doesn't know what to do. We don't know what to do, if I'm being honest. It's been hard with the jobs lately, but we're scrapping in just enough for now." Mr. Fulherty just nodded somberly. Bucky continued before he even realized he was talking anew, spitting out all the things he didn’t want to rant to someone he would see the next day, scared of what his words may influence. "I'm not sure what to do, really. I feel bad for grieving when it was Steve's mother. I feel so selfish. And Steve....god Steve's just all alone now, except for me, but I can't be out of the orphanage all hours of the day. I wish I could, but that'd be worth fifty good whacks from Manchester's great ol' paddl- Oh, oh I'm so sorry Mr. Fulherty I don't know what got into me. I'm sorr-"  
"Clevis," the older man interrupted brazenly, seemingly unfazed by all the hubbub that had oh so suddenly spilled from Bucky's mouth, uncaged and ravenous for the light of day's focus.  
"I'm sorry?" Bucky asked after a second, both enveloping all he himself had said to decipher what he shouldn’t have said and devising an intricate plan to discover what Mr. Fulherty’s mysteriously vague one-word reply was trying to get through Bucky's brain, all the thoughts and means whirling around and falling right out of his ears. What was going on with him?  
"Clevis, call me Clevis. It's my first name."  
Of course, it was. What did Bucky think it was. The key to another dimension where he could get lost forever? He wished. No. It was a name. Stupid. "Oh... right," Bucky laughed sheepishly to cover up how embarrassed he was with himself. A wave of discomfort rippled outwardly from his flustered self as he watched Clevis wince and give a soft smile to allow Bucky to know it was okay. It helped a little. "I actually... have to go, so I-"  
"Oh hold up," Clevis declared, leaving no time for Bucky to reproach the idea of melting in his own, self-induced puddle of shame for any longer than he had to as the man hopped away quite comically.

Bucky exhaled all the tenseness that came with being in any type of conversation that very trying week, but no more than a second later, and he was holding molecules in his lungs again as Clevis came back into the door frames view with something tan and big in his hand. The man held it out, presumably for Bucky to take, but the younger of the two knew his manners, and he would wait for verbal consent. 

Coincidentally, once he actually observed the telling characteristics that proved it was what it was, the discovery made him reluctant to even take it at all. It was a crisp loaf of bread, baked to the utmost idealistic percentage. It was large too. Clevis continued to pierce his eyes into Bucky’s, expectantly. "Mr. Fulhert- Clevis, I don't—I don't have any money."  
"I'm not asking for any. You look like a twig compared to the last time I saw ya'. This is my treat to you and to that kid you're always half-heartedly griping about," Clevis chuckled.  
Bucky almost cried because of how good it looked. Under usual circumstances, he would've refused a lot longer, but it smelled so heavenly, it only took him a brief intermission before he was reaching out a shaky hand to finally take it, probably looking at it like it was gold, which in his book it was. "Thank you, Clevis. Thank you so much. You have no idea-"  
"Yeah, yeah, it's no problem. Consider it my penance for putting a poor Brooklyn boy out of a job for a week." Bucky laughed. He actually, genuinely laughed.

 

  
He was a measly block away from the Rogers house when he spotted her. A woman, barely edging onto her thirties, leaning precariously against the exterior of the same bar Bucky had taken Steve to for his job celebration. She was wearing fur and a tapered flapper dress embellished with glowing pearls, her hair pinned up in tight dark curls. Her lips were a seductive red and brought out her prominent paleness but also her stark thinness. "How'd'ya do Ma'am?" he asked politely as he walked by.  
"You want somethin'?" she asked, putting on a professionally composed guise of provocative conviction, yet the slight empty lilt could be heard just beneath the surface on the promiscuous mask she fronted, like the words were so routine that she had a hard time committing to their meaning.   
"Sorry Ma'am?" he asked, slowing his pace and hoping he was wrong about what she did for a living.  
"Do you want something? I said it pretty clear." It was obvious she was getting irritated.  
"I don't want anything, but I do hope you get out of this stink hole someday and are able to settle down and follow what you wanted to do before all of whatever happened to you happened," he replied, smiling softly at her. He could tell she was taken back, face untying its knots created from probably years of configuration to what skeezeballs wanted. It wasn't his goal to knock her off of her feet. He just wanted to say what he thought she deserved. Without urging her to say anything further, he pulled out the bread he had stashed within his coat pocket, opposite to the pouch holding the porridge, and ripped it in half, giving a part to her as she took it cautiously.

She furrowed her eyebrows as she sniffed the fresh bread, obviously trying to hide how good it felt to smell something so pristine after such a long time of distasteful nourishment, just like how Bucky had to force himself from shoving the whole loaf down his throat when it was first given to him. "What do you want for it?" she retorted.  
"Nothing."  
"Yeah, okay—and who says you ain't gonna jump me as soon as I don't see it coming? 'S happened before. It could happen again."

Bucky tried to placate his emotions. He'd have given a whole basket of pastries to the girl if he could. Still, he wasn't about to have all that commiseration showcased right on his face. He hated it himself when people felt that openly towards him, who says she didn't. Instead of letting the silence drown them, he spoke finally. "I'm sorry that's happened to you Miss, truly, but there are still good people out there, not that I'm always good, but I'm good enough to realize you deserve better than what you get. Now I hope the best of your future Ma'am, but I gotta get going. Have a lovely day."  
She still covered herself in a cool air of the dubious accepting, but he saw just a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. He nodded at her before walking away.

 

  
As Bucky had suspected, Steve took another day off from the theater. On top of all the things decided fit to happen in the past week, Steve had contracted a serious cold. It was edging unstably on the dangerous rim of a fever, but Bucky hoped it would never get to that. That would be the icing on top of the disastrous cake. He slid inside as quietly as he could once he had seen his friend knocked out on the couch through the window. Smiling to himself at the ruffled way Steve’s hair chose to lay in disarray over his clammy forehead, Bucky went over to the kitchen.

The size of the kitchenette quarter was quaint, but it had enough room for two slim jims to slide in and work around each other without a lot of difficulties. Shelves protruded from one side of the cornered space and enclosed cupboards on the other wall, adjacent to the living room and front doorway while the perpendicular knee wall separated the two rooms in half partially. Searching through the principally vacant cupboards for the one sacred glass vial of linctus syrup they had saved for an event like this, he thought of all the other possible things he may need that winter. He observed the amount still contained within and mentally calculated how long it would last, unfortunately coming to a disappointing avail. The thick, amber liquid swashed slowing against the sides as he settled it onto the living room table. He took homage on the rickety chair parallel to the couch.

He would stay there all day if he could. His shift was starting in more or less four hours according to what the clock had shown in front of a window of the ancient thrift shop in a store chain near Steve's street. He would gladly spend the remainder of his free time with little Stevie, tiny framed and frail stature, delicate bones and an immune system to match. An unusual grace tied to his unique way of moving with every anatomical defect that had burdened him through the years weighing on his metaphorical internal operating system.

It was a sanguine show to see Steve sleeping so placidly. Though his slightly tumultuous inhales and exhales were transpired in their usual tremulous manners, his face was one of peace, a scene that made Bucky himself feel at ease—that was until Steve woke up suddenly as he began to hack up a lung.  
"Hey, hey Steve, you're good. You're good," Bucky placated as he sat on the side of the couch that his friend just sat up from and began to rub Steve’s back, alternating between circular patterns to actual pats and slaps, trying to rid of the itch that situated itself within the older of the two's throat. With every bark, small drops of phlegm shot out at all possible and peripheral points of view, but Bucky continued to try and alleviate his friend, barely paying mind to not so sanitary bacterial spread. Despite his attempts at aiding Steve, Bucky started to tense when he just continued coughing, non-stop. It was like a terrible pattern of hacks and wheezy breaths.  
_Hack. Wheeze. Hack. Wheeze. Hack. Wheeze. Collapse. Keel over. Stop breathing._  
But the last events were simply playing in Bucky's brain as a possible, hypothetical yet terrible outcome to the now normalized sequence of occurrences, paranoia burning every possible horribly ill-fated outcomes onto Bucky's eyelids so he couldn't escape them.

The universe decided to sympathize with Bucky's fears in a twist of fate, and Steve's coughs began to recede to choked noises before he grew silent after apologizing. A wince was etched on his face, most likely guilt, and Bucky felt like slapping him, first because Steve had scared him, and then because he had a chronic, habitual, innate trait for feeling bad for _getting sick_. Sure, sometimes it was his fault considering he never heeded Bucky's warnings about going outside without proper winter gear or going to factories doused in the stuff of Steve's allergic nightmares, but it wasn't his fault that he was born the way he was. Sometimes he seemed to forget that.

"Jesus Stevie, shut up and take some damn air into those lungs," Bucky chastised as he went over to the kitchen, grabbing a glass from cabinet that's door was cracked through in the middle, filling it up with the mediocre tap water from the faucet of the sink, and rushing back to Steve’s side, just like he always did—like he will always do. "Here, drink up." He handed the water over.  
"Thanks," Steve muttered hoarsely, the momentary damage done to his throat taking an effect on his voice.  
"Yeah, no problem punk. Just take a second, okay?" Bucky reached for the cough medicine on the table where he left it, unscrewing the cap and flipping it over so he could pour some of the medicine into the tiny improvised bowl.  
Steve looked up and grimaced. "Buck," he began, "don't we have to ration that? I don't think we can save up for another vial until next spring and-"  
"Steve, you basically just coughed out every internal organ known to mankind. I ain't lettin' you suffer like that just 'cause it gettin' a little cold outside at the moment. I-I'll find a way to get some if we run out in the winter. Don't worry... please."

Steve just sighed and capitulated, downing the cap after taking it out of Bucky's hand. Over the years, Steve had learned that he couldn’t easily change Bucky's mind. If he said he was going to do something, he was going to do it, especially if it came to the well-being of his best pal.

That was an obvious trigger for strong-headed Stevie—strong-headed and tiny framed Stevie. He liked to think he always had it in the bag. Bucky thought Steve did most of the time, except when it came to fighting. He really liked to start the fights, albeit usually for a good reason, like the guy was a slimy douche who couldn't keep his hands off a reluctant dame, or it was another guy yapping on obnoxiously and rudely about someone who was minding their own damn business. Steve hated that, and Bucky loved him for it—his big heart, pure to the core with a ruddy exterior ready for a punch or two if it meant lessening the weight off of someone else's shoulders. That's where him and Bucky came to a divide. Steve was a giver and would do anything to do the right thing, unruly a lot of the times, in a non-rude type of way if that was even possible. Bucky was in a way the same, but he was also an impenetrable, imperturbable force of dogged persistence—stubborn as an immovable force so to speak. It was like two gargantuan continental pieces of crust converging together and instead of destroying each other, they rose up to form a mountain.

Steve sat there a minute, Bucky guessed waiting until the syrup went all the way down his throat so he could talk again, lips pursed due to what could be the inferred tangy taste of the medicine. Finally, he spoke, “ You look tired.”  
Bucky laughed, “Yeah, you’re one to speak.”

Steve was always one to redirect the conversation from himself. Bucky had hoped his fatigue wouldn't come off so brazenly, but it wasn't a shock that Steve's crass, yet innocuous, confrontation with it was unsurmountable considering Bucky probably looked like one of those old grimy men that were dirty even before they started their jobs. It didn't settle well in his stomach, the fact that he was ripe at the age of sixteen and graying far more scantily than what someone would deem normal, not in the sense of hair, but in the sense of his personality. He was always able to pass it off with anyone but Steve. 

"Not that I'm not glad to see you bud, but what are you doing here. How'd you get out of the hellhole at this hour.” Steve always did have an uncanny awareness of time, something Bucky envied.  
"How did you even- how do you know what time it is? You just woke up."  
"I don't know. Ask my self-conscious Buck," Steve chuckled. Even with the lightness of his tone, Bucky felt the shallowness where his mother once resided. He could tell Steve was fighting natural coping mechanisms. Bucky was determined to distract him. He would do anything for Steve not to feel the ache. Shoving it down probably wasn't the best idea, for Steve and any other person besides Bucky himself anyway. He had too much to do. He didn't have enough time. Still, today, today Steve could get a break from what had happened to his two-person family, the family that now was disintegrated to ash and soot that resided in the wood ovens owned and utilized by the reaper in all its glory. Finding any way to furtively meander the others thoughts was a chance Bucky was willing to actualize at that moment. 

  
"Oh, you want me to?" Bucky asked suggestively, a mischievous smile emerging on his lips as the corners of his cheeks began to grow deeper and deeper.  
Steve’s face quickly turned from soft amusement to abrupt and wary dread. "Bucky no. Don't you dare-"  
"What?" Bucky asked innocently, slowly inching closer to Steve, who was now struggling out of the crisscross he set his legs in front of him as he sat opposite to his friend on the old couch, but Bucky was too fast for him. He tackled the smaller of the two down onto his back as Steve grunted in frustration before laughing.

"Hello!" Bucky shouted right into one of Steve's ears as he kept a firm but gentle grip on his small wrists. When Bucky turned twelve, he entered a growth-spurt that made him inches taller than Steve, and he's only gotten bigger than that since then. "SUBCONSCIOUS, WHY ARE YOU SO INTUITI-VE? Hello?! Ya hear me?" Bucky's knees were on either side of Steve’s hips, hovering above him as he continued to pester Steve's so Called _subconscious_.

It pleased Bucky that Steve knew that the second his pursed lips spread into a smile that wished a thousand of oh so bad things, he was either about to get viewing of one's of Bucky's horribly funny jokes or, in the case where he slowly pursued Steve like prey, that he was going to get pummeled with every inch of his life.

"Bucky, stop!" Steve laughed as he dispassionately tried to get out of the other's grip.  
"I'm sorry, I haven't heard this vital, need-to-know information from Mr. Steve Rogers subconscious yet!" he chucked to himself as Steve struggled more.  
"Jeez, Buck, you're such a buffoon!" Steve countered as he finally got Bucky's head out of the crook of his neck by squeezing the side of his head against his shoulder, forcing Bucky to retreat unless he wanted to get his face squashed.

They were both breathing hard as Bucky looked down at him, their faces only inches apart. Steve’s eyes were so different that up close. The cerulean blue ring surrounding lighter shades of the same base color looked almost like thunder, but it was soft, so soft. The indent in the middle of his forehead he got whenever he was exerted made itself known as both boys just bore into each other’s eyes, hot breath forcing itself from both of their mouths, but Steve's more, filling Bucky’s nostrils with the odd smell of medicated air. Everything was so suddenly quiet. It was as if time itself had slowed down. His heart was no longer beating with the remains of exertion from tackling. Bucky couldn't read Steve’s face, but if he just- leaned closer—if he let Steve raise his head where it rested on the couch the smallest bit upwards and didn't shove back like he was supposed to- if he-

A loud knock sounded from the front door, causing both of them to jump and scramble away from each other. Steve hurried up from the couch before Bucky got up too, "No 's okay Steve. I-I got this." He said, still a little out of breath. An uneasy awkwardness resided in the air like a murky cloud. Steve receded back onto the couch, before getting up again. Bucky was about to protest when he saw his friend simply get to his knees and fix the pile of books that were stacked under one corner of the couch to support it since the leg broke off a few months ago when his and Steve’s rough-housing got a little too extreme for the couch to handle. Sarah was so mad, but she didn't like to hold on to the foe malice she usually utilized to scare them into not doing anything of the sort again as long as she did before she got sick. Too much on the line, Bucky assumed, may not wake up the next day to apologize for scolding them.

Bucky righted his train of thought by focusing on the persistent round two of wraps of the door. He walked over to the door, opening it, then immediately regretting the transaction when Mr. Alistair Hollister looked him right in the eyes. A wave of worry swarmed his oncoming thoughts when he thought that the debt collector possibly saw whatever just happened between Steve and Bucky through the window situated right by the entrance, but brief relief of remembering covering said window with a sheet when he came in expelled the burdening internal hindrance.

"Mr. Hollister," Bucky smiled artificially so. He was Sarah's bank worker and came by every month to collect an increment of the debt they owed for taking out a mortgage on the house when Steve's mom's medical bills on top of his own rendered too much to afford. Trying to sell the house instead during such an economic crisis would be, in comparison, suicide.  
"Mr. Barnes! Lovely seeing you," the man stated, genuine surprise etched over his face. He wasn't originally from Brooklyn. Anyone could tell that, the way he held himself, his voice and the octaves and lilts in which he used to configure into speech, a sardonic, pretentious nuance hiding in plain sight like he knew he was better than everyone, and he wanted them to know it too but without being obvious about. It was unscrupulous and it made Bucky want to call him contemptible like he had voiced to Bucky and the Rogers so many time with just his eye and his crooked smile. Bucky thought it was pretty comical watching him squirm like a fish out of water under the formers gaze. He probably guessed Steve would be alone, that maybe he could trick a sick, distraught, and partly absent with grief, teenager is a moment of vulnerability where the businessman could shape his words to resemble some positive outcome idea and get Steve to agree to a euphemism that would lead him deeper down the rabbit hole of misfortune and Mr. Hollister up the ranks as Saint Charles Bank.  
"Well, thanks. Pardon my forwardness, but what are you doing here? I could've sworn we paid our dues this month."  
"Yes, you did," Mr. Hollister agreed, faux sympathy settling on his expression. "but I’m afraid you didn't calculate the interest rate properly."  
_Great, that's where this was going..._  
"I'm pretty sure I can handle my math just fine, sir."  
"Well, sorry to inform you on such short notice, but we increased the rate recently. Perhaps you didn't take that into account."  
"Well, I guess not, considering I never heard anything about it in the papers," Bucky gritted his teeth. He could hear Steve shift on the couch behind him.  
"I hate to do this to you poor souls, but you going to have to turn in an additional," the man grabbed a small notepad from his suit pocket and flipped it open to a certain page, "two dollars and eighty-two cents to the ten dollars and fifty-three cents you already paid."  
Bucky's heart plummeted and a lump formed in his throat. His nose flared as he spoke again, "Is that all?"  
"Oh, I was wondering if I could maybe speak to Mr. Rogers about an estate deal with the-"  
"I'm sorry, but he's sleeping."  
"But if you could just wake him up then-"  
"Have a great day Mr. Hollister."

That was it, and then a Bucky slammed the door in his face, heaving out a ginormous sigh filled with all the nasty words he wanted to spit at the arrogant git. He turned around and let his head fall against the now closed door, cringing as the glass of the arched window in the middle of the heap of wood rattled beneath his force.

"I really wish he came by earlier," Steve mumbled sullenly.

Bucky walked back over to the living room table, grabbing a scrap piece of paper from the pile of sketches and full-blown works Steve had made. He seized a chunk of charcoal that off to the side, as to not contaminate the drawings with any extra smudges, according to Steve, and wrote down the digits Mr. Hollister had announced. Finally he faltered around the circumference of the stand to end up on the other side of Steve on the couch, where they were before the wrestling match, and in front of the view of the dilapidated wallpaper of blush and bashful roses surrounding the large window adjacent to the door he never wanted to go through again, to just stay here forever. He plopped down in an extremely low slouch and looked up and to the side right to see Steve, who was biting his lip as he stared at the shadows of the window frame dancing through the off-white sheet covered glass in front of him with a suspicious attentiveness.  
"Why's that?" Bucky mumbled, suddenly more weary than before.  
"’Cause I got some extra lettuce from the theater for taking over for Johnny when he found out his wife was in labor. Cleaned up almost the whole building."  
"What’d you do with the money, Steve?" Bucky asked as he rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.  
The silence and the posture basically wrote a book about how Steve was feeling. His shoulders were hunched and his face a little downcast. He was either guilty or nervous or both.  
"Got you somethin'"  
"Stevie," Bucky groaned as he sat up and turned fully towards his friend. "Why? I don't need anything."  
"Yes you do!" Steve proclaimed angrily. He pulled out a book from behind him, a new book. So he wasn't just fixing the stack of them under the couch. Bucky quickly remembered the slight question simmering on his tongue when he first sat down on the couch upon arrival and thought it was the slightest bit tilted.

"Ever since that God-awful dystopian home of yours cut back your schoolin' to every other week, just so they could have you do more chores, 'cause they had to cut some staff, more work, 'cause they needed you to pay for more of those stupid tickets, you've been losing interest in it. I had to stop going in ninth cause I was getting so sick so often. You're healthy, abled. You gotta stick with it Buck," he pulled Bucky's hand from the latter's lap desperately and flipped it over, palm up, so he could put the book into it. "If not for you, for me."

Steve withdrew to his side of the couch again while Bucky tested the book now in his hands, flipping it around, 'The Waves by Virginia Woolf' embellished with golden flecks of color. Natural affinity was quickly, but reluctantly, overpowering his need to sternly lecture Steve about their ever-fluctuating financial status. He pulled back the cover to look at the pages within. "You got me a book," he whispered with a soft quirk to the corner of his mouth.  
He looked up at Steve to the watch the latter slowly unroll the tension in his shoulders when he realized Bucky wasn't mad, at least not as mad as first thought. "Yeah."

Silently, as to keep the placid muteness contained in the room, Bucky got up again and walked over to grasp his coat, reaching into the inner pockets to pull out the half loaf and the can of porridge still in there where he left them. He handed the food to Steve, whose eyes grew wide at the sight.  
"How'd you- Where did you get th-"  
"Just eat the damn bread and porridge, Steve. You look even skinnier than usual, which is saying a lot." It wasn't meant to be a jab, and Steve knew if his smirk of compliance was anything to go by. He began to nibble at the already ripped side of the cooked dough, savoring the freshness, Bucky guessed.  
"Can I read to you?" He asked as he perched himself onto the earlier vacated wooden chair.  
"Yeah, okay," Steve said loudly over the clumps of eagerly eaten bread in his mouth, deciding to go for a more ravenous approach than his first actions.

Bucky opened the pages again, pleased by the satisfying crack of the spine of a new book.

"The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually..."

 

  
At some point, Bucky imagined, since he was too entrapped in the eclectic vocabulary in the work when he was reading, Steve had let his head fall onto the arm of the couch and fell asleep again, only crumbs remaining on the blanket he had covering his lap and his charcoal dusted fingers.

Bucky smiled to himself before getting up and grabbing his coat. After shrugging it on, he went over to the pile of paper on the living room table again, grabbing the piece that held the dire digits to the house's income and also a new blank piece, a little crumbled on the sides. "Went to work. Get better ya' doof," he inscribed. He placed the note front and center on the table and headed out the door, beginning his voyage for the docks.

 

  
When he finally made to his block, he was completely and utterly wiped. He felt the crude of the imported and exported goods with dirty exteriors that he had to basically hug to get anywhere streaked across his face and clothes. His hair was sticking up in all directions and frizzy somehow despite the lack of humidity that hung in the air that day. Sweat was deadly not to wipe up every few minutes when you were working it up in the cold. It could soon turn frigid and stick to your skin like the ice it was destined to be. It could get into your immune system and knock you down a few pegs, so you had to maintain the dry, functional version of yourself. He drudged across what was left of his journey home, knowing fully well that the rest of the winter, October itself even, was going to be like this with the added hours he'd have to ask for to help pay off the bills. Steve would protest, because he always does, but it was like a boy talking to a stiff wall in this scenario.

He watched his feet drag across the sturdy concrete, caring as much as he did about looking presentable when it came to the fact that he knew the way he made his feet scrape across the ground was going to surely pull some threads in the moccasins high above their extent and scorch them with the friction of rock on leather. Time passed and it felt like forever before he caught the sight of protruding stairs on the walkway, cracked and aged to his left from where he had his gaze on the ground. The orphanage was the only building on the street with that type of design. Bucky had always tried to put a name on the architectural style good old Abraham used, but it mostly looked like a badly done concoction of everything; funky.

He forced his legs onto every degrading step, one after the other, after the other, and after the other, until he saw the front door. He grasped the lever handle and pushed down with the strength he could muster through his feeble limbs, hoping it was unlocked. He had lost track of time as he had floundered his way across town, watching Fords and Chevy's, Studebakers pass with strongly held conviction from the unseen drivers, knowing that they were incorporated in some the newest and coolest technological advances of the twenties and thirties.

The orphanage usually locked the doors at ten. Maybe he still had time.

Incorrect. Always incorrect. No sense of time. No sense of time like tiny framed Stevie.

The sharp yank of the door inwards into the building shocked him and forced him into a little more of an awake state. He stepped back when who opened the door turned out to be Ms. Kalrem, the she-devil herself. Her face was composed in a symphony of seething, malicious lines of obvious anger. "James Buchanan Barnes, get into this institution this instant!"  
"Uh...y-yes Ma'am," he replied blankly, suspicious statements, questions racing through his brain. What happened? Was it really that late? What did he do now?

She slammed the door as soon as he got in, still narrowly missing the skin of the back of his head, making him jump forward. The racket echoed through the great hall, completely vacant beside from the two of them. He looked up after a second to see her gazing at him, her tight lips on the verge of ranting a statement estimated to be the size of the Titanic. "How was your day, Mr. Barnes? Tiresome I presume?"  
That wasn't what he was expecting. "Oh, um... yeah I- it was pretty rough," he chuckled nervously, "lots of work on the docks, y'know."  
"And your work for Mr. Fulherty..."  
"What? Oh—yes! Definitely quite the toil Ms. Kalrem."  
"Interesting, to say the least..." she muttered.  
"Ma'am?"  
"It's just interesting," she voiced again, this time with an unusual renewed vigor, partly filled with poorly covered rancor, but a pleased expression over everything. It was odd. She looked him up and down. "Oh, sorry, James. I'm being pretty cryptic I suppose. I just thought it was intriguing considering I summoned Clevis Fulherty to the monophone today, during the time in which you should've been on your way to the docks."

His stomach churned through the single measly meal of porridge he had that morning. "Oh...is that... so Ma'am?"  
"Mhmm, and he said that you only visited, that you didn't have a 'job' to work on or him—said he asked you earlier this week and you turned it down, funny enough."

He sunk his head in defeat. He couldn't blame Mr. Fulherty. How was the old man supposed to know what they did to the kids in a place like Bucky's? The only person he griped about it to was Steve and the bean guy at the docks.

Kalrem was tapping her sharp heel with an unpenetrated persistence as he remained where he stood, clenched hands in his pockets. "Would you come up to Mr. Manchester's office with me, Mr. Barnes?"  
"Of course."

Mr. Barnebus Manchester was a man of many mysteries. He never had a wife or children. He never seemed to leave his office, and he never ever smiled. By the time Kalrem knocked on his door when they reached it, Bucky's heart was hammering. A muffled 'come in' could be heard through the wood and Kalrem immediately complied, keeping her firm grip on Bucky's upper arm. "Master Manchester, I have a delinquent in my midst tonight." she chanted roughly, and she pulled him into the spacious room, only lit by a bright fire burning in the mantle as well as a few light bulbs scattered in asymmetrical patterns.  
His surroundings made him feel like he was in the working quarters of a prestige boarding school's posh principle. Blood red drapes were on either side of the desk with a fancy chair slotted in it, housing Mr. Manchester. They covered the tall windows that were visible from the front out the house, outside. The carpet was edging on the rim of royal, plush looking and clean. It made Bucky distinguishably agitated. They had money to get the magisterial head of the orphanage a new carpet, but expending the money on the kids who actually have to live in the hell hole was considered a pipe dream, and they were left to rot with bare feet on splintered wood.

Manchester was an overweight chrome dome with pale skin and bushy eyebrows, stout and double-chinned. His mustache was a horrendous bush of coarse-looking brown hair, speckled with grey, and his lips were set in a permanent and rather painful looking pucker.

"Mr. Barnes, if I remember correctly," Manchester announced, already rising from his seat and hovering closer and closer to the cabinet that held Bucky's impending doom. It may have been while since he had visited 'the big room', and there may have been a few different placements of things back then, like the record player that instead of lying on his desk now resided on a separate table in the corner of the room, but he knew where the paddles were held, and that hasn't changed its spot.  
"Yes, sir, you're correct."  
"What did you do that was so bad that Madam Kalrem decided it fit to take up the admonishment with me, may I ask?"  
He was so done with all those fancy people with their nonchalant phrases that sounded so seamlessly articulate, the epitome of graceful decorum, but there were two types of proper etiquette, and Kalrem, Manchester, and Hollister were the bad kind. "I said- uh that I was- uh..."  
"Enough of this tomfoolery," Kalrem declared soon after, barely giving Bucky any inaugural leeway to explain for himself, "Master, he fibbed about fake duties to get out of the house on a strictly work to home day. The next field day isn't scheduled 'till next Thursday. If he isn't at work, then he should be at the orphanage doing his chores, doing his part to live here."

Bucky resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Manchester opened the cabinet and started rummaging through it, the contents covered by the door. "I see," he started, "James, have you ever been in here before. Sorry, my memory isn't the best."  
"Y-yes, sir."  
"So you know what the punishment is for, and why I have to do it?"  
"Yes."  
"Well at least, then I don't have to explain myself," he laughed, and Bucky wanted to choke his fat face. He straightened out again with a dark brown paddle held tightly in his left hand, grooves on one side of the flat plane that looked like semi-sharpened pegs.

 

  
Walking to his bunk after they finally released him an hour later proved to be more of a challenge than he first expected. It was late, he found out when he tried to keep eye contact on the clock as he thoroughly received his reprimands over Manchester's desk, with Kalrem watching in a corner like the creepy monster she was, ashamed by the want to let tears of pain release themselves from the damned science of surface tension. The seconds felt like centuries and the minutes proved their roles to be drawn out millenniums.

He walked stiffly, every bending of his rear reinvigorating the memory of the sting of wood on skin. He never understood how the vile nature of the punishment could even possibly be considered one of correct discipline. Every inch of his body throbbed, and his heart was as heavy as a ton of bricks, just like the ton of bricks he abruptly encountered when he attempted to turn the last corner into the teenager's quarters.

"Well, hey there, Buchanan," Gilbert taunted. It was too dark to see a lot of details of anything. The only luminescence out in the hallways were the gas lights at every corner, giving no justice to Bucky's desperately searching eyes for an escape. Gilbert's silhouette was pretty intimidating even if Bucky hated to admit it. The guy was big, bigger than Bucky at least and a little on the chubby side with shaggy brown hair. Bucky usually was able to hold his own. Gilbert didn't really scare him, but Bucky was so tired and so out of it, he wouldn't be able to defend himself from a simple wasp flying everywhere around him.  
"Leave me alone, Gilbert," Bucky muttered.  
"Oh, I don't think so, Bee."  
The use of Darius' nickname for him sparked a fit of new anger in Bucky.  
"I said leave me alone!" He still tried to be quiet. Waking up everyone in the middle of the night, especially the rowdy younger ones would get him in even more trouble than before. "I didn't even do anything to you."  
"Maybe not, but you gave an invitation."  
"What are you talking about?"  
"'Maybe catch up with me after I get back, Gilly!'" Gilbert said in a voice octaves too high to resemble Bucky's but clearly his words taking into account as soon as the goon said them, he remembered saying that when Gilbert tried to fight him that morning. He didn't mean it though. He was just trying to get out of the idiot's line of fire for the time being.  
"I... I didn't mean-"  
"Well, I took it that you wanted to challenge me, little old me," Gilbert stated, closing in impossibly closer on Bucky, "and nobody challenges me."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first photo above is what I used for reference for the Rogers Residence and the one after is Mr. Fulherty's house's inspiration. 
> 
> 1936 was a pretty good year, considering The Great Depression was swooping through the nation like a ravenous forest fire.
> 
> The mentions of the dust bowl are a series of natural weather phenomena that occurred in the early thirties. They were basically collections of air-born dust and dirt that were sweeping across rural areas like Texas and Oklahoma at the time. The damage they caused, like vegetation, ruined a lot of farms and hurt the farmers market. 
> 
> Virginia Woolf was an author who was greatly appreciated for her work despite the era she was in. She was a visionary and a great example of a revolutionary of her time with her wishes for women’s rights. The exert Bucky reads is one of her works called ‘The Waves’ To be completely honest, I just searched up popular books during 1936, and it came up, so I used it, but I do actually plan on reading it very soon.  
> The views Bucky has on women are maybe just me trying to make him seem like good guy despite the times ‘norms’, but I truly do think that Bucky from the movies would be the respectful type who respects the bomb af women around him.
> 
> In 1936, the Rural Electrification Act was put into action by FDR and basically gave a lot of rural homes electricity, so I kind of used that type of mindset to hypothesize that New York City was pretty good on the electricity front already, even with the poverty.
> 
> Darius’ last name is actually Royale which is just me trying to add little touches here and there considering Darius was the name of the predecessor of the Persian Emperor Cambyses II, Cyrus the Great’s son and complete destroyer of the amazing empire Cyrus created. He was known for being a well-loved ruler considering he was "nice". It's hard to translate what the Persians though of as nice to modern day nice, but I do know for a fact that he practiced religious tolerance. Darius basically fixed every thing Cambyses screwed up and made things like the royal road, so he was a pretty great ruler (hence using Darius and Royale as in royal for his name). Still, every person has two or more sides, and if you known anything about the way Darius treated Macedonia, then you may be wary of any foreshadowing that comes into play…
> 
> Gilbert’s last name is Alexander and Alexander the Great of the Macedonian Empire and Darius of Persia aren’t the best of friends to say the least. I really didn’t intend to make this comparison, but in a way is works out. Still, don't think of Gilbert as a host for the things Alexander did other than his rivalry with Darius because.... Gilly ain't gonna be anything like that Odysseus loving legend. 
> 
> I’m really not an expert in the home owning area, so this may be completely off, but I do have the inflation rates of what the money mentioned in the chapter would equal today so do with it what you will.
> 
> {1936 ; 2018}
> 
> $10.53 = $188.11  
> $2.82 = $50.38
> 
> Average wage of a house in 1936:
> 
> $3,925 = $70,134
> 
> I actually changed Steve and Bucky’s ages from what they are in the movies, because I just couldn’t not make Bucky younger than Steve. So, they have the same birth dates, as far as day and month go, but Bucky was born in 1920, making him currently 16, and Steve was born in 1917, making him 19. I know I KNOW, it probably completely screws up their serial numbers, but you know what—I did a freaking ton of research for this crap, so I can tweak an Itty bitty portion :)
> 
> This is literally the longest thing I ever written and this series will be a pretty broad view of Bucky’s life, so prepare for a lot of words, because I plan on going to at least 10k wc a chapter.
> 
> Please bare with me and my procrastination defects. I will try to update as fast as I can.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> ~Lili <3


	2. The Things We Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky works to make up the interest he forgot about and tumbles into a few encounters on the way.  
> (Warning for a homophobic slur towards the end)
> 
> WC=12,314

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the wait! I managed to finish the chapter and revise, but it took a long while cause I was uninspired. Still I got that done and then both me and my beta had to concentrate more on our 2nd nine weeks exams at our schools. Finally it is here.... and I hope you like it.
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for the kudos and bookmarks and whatnot, and feel free to listen to yet another brief little history lesson in the endnotes if you want to understand some of the references and stuff.
> 
> Also, if you feel as though this may be a little too drawn out for your liking, that's fine, but I assure you it'll pick up very soon. I just want to make the build-up of the transactions between certain characters and key plot points more realistic and believable.
> 
> Thank you again and enjoy the read!
> 
> ~Lili <3
> 
> [Here's the link to the Chapter 2 Playlist ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQLbXGeUHBiy4lRwS2DOCGs7kW8UMeBAD) Enjoy!

_October 28th, 1936: Wednesday_  

 

His face still felt tainted by a residual ache of bruises that had yet to completely fade. Gilbert Alexander really did do a number on him that night. His pointless, nonsensical, implausible reasoning for beating Bucky to a pulp right outside their quarters with a sadistic grin stitched into his lips was all but unethical based on how much that day had royally screwed Bucky over. Still, when had Gilbert ever even grazed the surface of interest in the confines of ethical manners?

It was hardly likely that every single boy inside of that supposedly sleeping teen ridden room didn't bat an eye or even wake a little by the abrupt ruckus of one person pounding his fist into the other's face. It was hard to believe that all of them slept soundlessly and unfretted through the tired grunts of pain from Bucky as he got his stomach kicked so hard that his head went swirling.

It was utterly the antithesis of some tranquil vicinity of silence even besides the fact that a heavy door separated the transpiring conflict from about twelve or something bunk beds, and when Gilly finally felt satisfied with his vindictive crusade, and he decided fit to just pull the two grand doors wide open without a care in the world for the wished quietness that night always asked for, it certainly was a preposterous idea to assume that Bucky imagined all the grumpy and few sympathetic faces that rose from the minor comfiness of their beds to discover what the commotion was about as he keeled over from the amplification of pain and Gilbert plainly shedded of his top layers of clothing and then covered his dishabille state with his cozy blankets.

Nobody would try anything though. Did Bucky blame them? No. Anyone with any type of knowledge about the normal shenanigans around the orphanage who in fact was an orphan themselves knew better to than mingle within the crossfires of Gilbert's games.

Bucky got up eventually. He didn't even bother to rid of his clothes as he faltered into the room and climbed up onto his bunk while Darius simply watched him with an enigmatic look of his face, his elbows on either side of him, digging into the mattress to look at his friend.

Even a week later, he still caught some people looking at him weirdly. Maybe he was imagining it, but with how frequently he felt a random pair of eyes seeping into his back as he walked, it wasn't the most out there type of feeling. Besides, that was the usual charade when someone fell victim to Gilbert's extremities. Over the years he built up a genuinely infamous record.

Darius scowled as Bucky walked into the dining hall that morning. It wasn't directed towards Bucky himself. He knew that. Darius was still silently fuming about the purple that still remained in light shades on Bucky's face.

"Let it go Dar," Bucky mumbled, plopping down next to his friend at one of the tables, "It's been a full damn week."

"Oh, so that automatically makes it less of importance? You think I shouldn't be mad that the demon staff here aren't doin' anything to stop him from pummeling anyone he sees fit?" Darius angrily scooped at some of the lumpy swirl of undercooked eggs in his bowl and shoved it in his mouth. Bucky felt like laughing at him for it, but his stomach growled before he got the chance. Darius heard too if his critical face was anything to go by. That morning Bucky thought it more valuable to shower and brush his teeth since he hadn't for God knows how long, and today he truly did have a job with Mr. Fulherty.

One roll of his friend’s eyes and Bucky automatically knew he was in for it.

"Bee," Darius started, lifting a leg out from beneath the table and landing it on the other side of the bench, his patented ‘I’m going to give a parental talking to and you’re going to shut up and listen’ stature.

"Yes, Darius, blow your horn already. I'm getting tired, and it's only the morning.”

The other automatically went to open his mouth, but nothing came out, lips obviously trying to find some snappy reply or surreal concerned comment and getting lost in frustration. Instead, he settled for digging in one of his trousers pockets, leaving befuddled and more or less suspicious ideas to roam in Bucky's brain for the time being.

Eventually, his hand arose from the pouch with a small slip of paper wagging in between two fingers precariously. Sloppily printed letters were inscribed onto one side, but only a few legible characters, 'od', could be seen with Darius' middle finger covering the rest. Still, the cheap, partially stained style of the parchment and the easily recognizable handwriting, looking exactly like Manchester's favorite orphan pet, Alec’s, made him know instantly what it was.

Most of the time, when it came to the handling of tickets, Kalrem was Manchester’s first choice as to working all the pragmatism of it out, (Bucky had almost thrown up one time while imagining the possibilities as to why they were so close, thinking of what they did in their free time, maybe together romantically. To go easier on his stomach, he settled it for a sibling-esk relationship) but she wasn’t free all the time, and they needed someone to actually produce the physical tableau of the tickets themselves. That’s where Alec Benard came in. He had always been Manchester’s favorite, probably the product of the egg being raised there since the ripe ol’ entering age of five and being taken under Manchester’s wing like some sort of apprentice.

"Are you kidding me?" Bucky voiced, terse and agitated. Darius shoved the food ticket forward, smiling undeterred and awaiting his friend to take it. He didn't. "I'm not taking that, so you can scamper along and get a second serving, or better give it to someone who needs it."

"Okay," Darius replied, pushing the paper further into Bucky's personal space as if to solidify that Bucky's words entailed not exactly want the latter wanted them to imply. "No." he stated after a few seconds past with a resilient Darius giving him a stern look. "No." again, he reiterated.

Sometimes, his friend liked to test his patience. It wasn't as though Bucky didn't want to eat whatever he could get his hands on at the moment. His pride just simply wouldn't allow him to.

Darius was basically imperturbable, his annoyed expression digging into Bucky's arms, legs, chest, every single body part visible until the latter finally relented and took that stupid flimsy sheet of paper, like he was pleading with all of Bucky's other bits and pieces to get them to take it since his brain was too much of a spaz to.

An innate talent of Bucky’s seemed to be his tough means of sticking it out and not giving in as easily as one would wish him to. It had come to be very resourceful throughout the years, and it seemed to grow in aptitude since the day he started to learn his own train of thought as a wee baby until now and hopefully forever, an abiding fortification, and yet, despite his years of self-indulgent and ostensibly forced bouts of preparations for conflicts of the sort, he gave in. It took a lousy portion of a minute, and he gave in. He sure was resilient.

It wasn't usually his normal problem solver, but he was only just feeling better from the news that had been haunting his dreams for the past ten or so days. If he kept to his pretenses of being the obstinate brat he always was for much longer, he'd lose one of the only friends he had—true friends, that is.

He was pretty popular in school, a lady's man Steve loved to advertise, but they were just mutuals. Every girl he would make out with in the corner of the dance hall down on Warren Street, a fling. The ladies who’d let him venture a little closer to home under their skirts, a little more intimate flings. Every fellow male peer he'd play cards with during lunch at school, nothing more and nothing less than a person who thought they knew everything about the guy they were shuffling cards for but in retrospect being completely blind to their real attributes.

He grabbed the paper but didn't even look at his friend as he got up and walked over to the dilapidating line of people. He was at least grateful that the idiot decided to give the ticket to him fifteen minutes before breakfast closed instead of five. Otherwise, he'd only get one meal out of the thing other than the contracted two that Kalrem explained it was worth; morning food and night food; no lunch; they could fend for themselves apparently with that one.

When Mr. Rollins hit the plate Bucky held out to him and simultaneously took the ticket from the younger of the two's hand and marked it before giving it back, Bucky noticed that his eggs were a lot less runny than his friends. If was probably from simmering in a pot for a longer time, or maybe Rollins realized finally that he was the lousiest cook known to man and decided to apologize for his unscrupulous ways; the first idea was the best bet.

Darius watched with a satisfied grin as he watched Bucky take up his original spot at the table. Bucky grumbled a small 'thank you' before devouring the meal in two minutes tops. Lo and behold, his mind felt extremely more well-grounded and less airy than before. When was the last time he had a full-fledged meal? 

Suddenly a realization struck him. "Oh no." he groaned, remembering too late that he should've at least left a little behind for Steve's sake. Hopefully, the breadline would be short today or his little friend was screwed.

"Well, that's not exactly what I was expecting from that face you were just making but oka-"

"No, no Darius—I- it's fine. I just... should've saved some for Stevie."

"Oh you mean that fairy you always yammer about," Darius automatically replied a little too seamlessly. Bucky clenched his jaw and held back the filthy comeback he wished he could yell at the guy, but he just bought his food for the day. What kind of backward sense or morale did that make? On the other hand, Darius laughed at his own jab like they were a group of bullies pulling on Steve's strings, just like the jerks that Bucky used to pull off Steve when he still went to school and they'd pick on him constantly.

"He's... he isn't a fairy Darius."

"Yeah okay, tell that pipsqueak of a body that or maybe his pretty little drawings."

"You think he can control the way his body grows?" Bucky asked, trying as hard as he could muster to keep his voice under control.

"Whatever, he still sketches all that stuff'n that  ain't normal."

"So just cause he likes art means that he's been shakin' it up with some queens or somethin'? Tell me Darius what's the reasoning in that load of shit?"

Based on how his friend continued to move his mouth with no avail to actual concrete words, Bucky assumed that he finally ran out of terms to supply to the senseless idea. Bucky hoped his friend realized that all he was blabbing about Steve’s hobbies and build aided in absolutely no indicators to prove his accusations.

Bucky made a mental note not to bring up anything of the account to Steve himself. The tension that had risen between both Steve and Darius as time passed augmented only every time Bucky would let slip to one or the other their opposing opinions about so and so. They really had only met a handful of times, a few field days here and there and some visits from Steve to the orphanage, though Kalrem usually extricated him from the premises as soon as his appearance would be leaked into her awareness.

"I'm gonna get ready to head to Mr. Fulherty's. Thanks for the ticket, Darius; really."

The other gave him a tight smile as Bucky got up, grabbing his dish and walking over to the gigantic tub that all the dirty platters went. Then he headed for one of the two staircases that led to the second floor where all the beds were.

He tried to shake the odd feeling making his stomach queasy. Either those eggs weren't the perfect meal for him that day or something else was going on that had nothing to do with the former assumption. He only stopped by his cot to grab a few knick-knacks he always kept with him on his shifts. He brought a zippo lighter, and Bucky was able to steal a deal three times its original price from a homeless guy selling whatever he had to offer to find the best shelter he could with the upcoming seasons. He had only ever seen it in on the TVs in the store windows before that, being advertised to the wealthy.

Bucky felt guilty at first for taking it from him with the winter coming up and the endless need for anything close to heat, but the man insisted, constantly lowering the price every single time Bucky dismissed his offer. 

Bucky traded cigarettes all the time but always decided it best to not give in to the temptation of smoking them himself. It was bad for his lungs and pearly whites in the long run, and it was bad to even blow a whiff of the stuff near Steve in the short run. All in all, it wasn't the best choice.

It felt as though every single decision in Bucky's only still beginning life revolved around one tiny-framed guy, and it worried Bucky that he didn't even care if it did; maybe even secretly liked it.

The other contents within his 'work pack', which was just a fancy word for his work designated right outer pocket, was a deck of cards and a few marbles to cure the boredom of the wait that was needed for ships to actually slot into the pear, and the new book Steve gave him. He smiled as he looked at the front cover before reluctantly rolling it up so he could shove it in his pocket.

He wasn't going to risk another boy snooping through his stuff and finding it, stealing it, maybe even making fun of Bucky because it was made by a girl, at which point Bucky would say it's better than all that nonsense by Herman Melville or Edgar Allen Poe, a partial fib considering Bucky adored all three of the esteemed authors for their phenomenal work, but it was what he would have to say for the lady to get some respect for her moxie to publish such an astonishing work and not hide her true name within the letters that made up any presumably masculine name.

It's what he had to do to get her art recognized. And then Steve popped into his brain again, clapping him on the back for a being a respectful liberal like he was. Bucky always wondered whether he’d be like that if it wasn't for Steve. Was it that Steve changed him for the better, or that he was just scared of what his friend may think if he did all those douchey things that a lot of guys his age did?

Bucky remembered one time, when he was pretty young, joining in with Jimmy McCarthy and Toby Stewart as they started picking on Richy Adam's just because he was dark skinned. A little tingle of something stung in his core as he glided along with the wretched things they chanted, how Richy didn't belong, how he was dirty. Steve was looking for Bucky apparently, and he did find him right in the midst of the conflict. Steve didn't talk to Bucky for a week.

He didn't think he was a bad person. He tried not to be. He tried to be respectful to the women. He found himself feeling guilty for selfish wants. He was scared that some day, all of it would avail to nothing, that maybe one day, he'd turn into a grumpy and pathetic excuse for a man, a dirty unshaven face with a bottle of liquor in his hands, and he'd end up with everyone shunning him away. It was a conundrum, something he didn't like to think about until it crept it's way slyly into daily thoughts.

The pack wouldn't come into handy until he actually got to the dock itself at five that night. Now, his goal was to head over to Thirty-Second Street and accompany Mr. Fulherty with whatever he wanted Bucky’s assistance for. He planned on convening as much satisfactory work as he was able, anything he could to do to get some money worth something. He left the house with no interference from Kalrem, a rare phenomenon, and he took in the same cold air that felt so much heavier to him a week ago.

As he really, truly had time to adjust to how different everything felt without the presence of one of the lightest souls he'd ever known, he began to look at what had happened to Sarah in a new perspective. She definitely had it worse off than most of the tuberculosis victims, considering the ward closest to the Roger's house in DUMBO was already becoming overflowed, and, despite the fact that it was basically illegal, they started to charge new people trying to get care in their building.

They lied about everything. They lied about the best insurance in the world. They lied about promised beds. It was sick and skeevy and one of the many things wrong with the corrupt world, but just like the shenanigans that occurred in Abraham, they were unchecked and practically invisible to the government, so, in the end of it all, she ended up leaving her body on the same bed she had slept in for so many years as a healthy, thriving woman, in their rickety house, with her rickety bed frame and her rickety breaths that worsened as the disease progressed.

They didn't have any money for the things the health administrations were trying to treat the patients with, or experiment with really, _and_ the doctor who would come to check on her every few days. He was nice, but he still needed to make a living for himself; understandable. They were just lucky that the funeral had been taken care of by some of Sarah's old nurse friends, and the service took place at a cemetery in King County called Cypress Hills. It was one of the more expensive ones, but the women simply placated Steve's worry when he brought up the financial matter with them, tiny-framed Stevie always worried about others problems.

In her final hours, Bucky wasn't there, aiding to his perpetual haze of resilient guilt. The usual problem for Bucky's tardiness was always the orphanage. There were no free days coming up and Kalrem had called off his shifts because he had chores to do. He was lucky they didn't automatically kick his butt to the curb. The shipping quarters were always hiring. One man left and then ten others would be lined up for the job. He never really did get how he kept the position, actually.

Steve had to ride it out on his own, and it was even worse considering he couldn't remain by her side, hold her hand, kiss her clammy forehead since if he did do such things, he would most likely end up in the same boat as her.

Steve sobbed into Bucky's shoulder when they finally got to see each other the next day. He repeatedly chanted that he wanted to help her, but she wouldn't let him even close to her cot, going so out of her way to keep him safe that she dragged her extremely weak body out of the bed to lock the door. He waited outside of the room for forever as he listened to her hack so violently that it was as if the force shook the entire house until at late night when the bodily noises had dissipated to nothing.

He'd held such a strong facade at the funeral, when they were in the company of other people, but as soon as they were back behind closed doors, Steve had let every built-up mask of stoic and accepting decorum crumble around him like an aged wall already on the brink with cracks in every corner, so deeply held that the release of letting it all fall was overpowering. The emotion in which he siphoned that terrible night was so immense Bucky felt it himself, as an additional hurt to collaborate with his own aching heart and teary eyes.

The weeks that had past already discerned themselves as a challenge, going so achingly slow, it made every sorrow amplify tenfold, but as Bucky began to really perceive what happened and tried so hard to find a better way to think of it, his body and mind had begun to become clear again, slowly, but still with an effective outcome.

He knew she was in so much pain. She tried to hide it, but with the way she had looked, it wasn't hard to tell how fake she was acting. Now though, she had left that body behind, the one with the bad lymph nodes and the creaky bones, the one with the bloody lungs and the blatant all over malaise. Where she went, he really didn't know. He didn't want to know either. Heaven was an interesting theory, but it wasn't the only thing he thought about.

Bucky was not very religious, to begin with. He didn't grow up with a family strictly this or that, so he never learned to have a preference. Kalrem had stated frequently before that he was a 'heeb', because that's what his parents were, which he was pretty sure meant Hebrew. Apparently, it wasn't one of the nicest things to call a Jewish person. In the end though, he really just never cared, until it came to Sarah. Now, he was always questioning where she actually went. All he really was sure of was that she wasn't suffering now, and that was the fact that kept him going and he planned on using the catharsis for as long as it lasted.

Mr. Fulherty welcomed him with a warm smile that Bucky reciprocated before stepping into the house at the other man's request. "You doing alright, James?" he asked cheerily.

"Oh, yeah I'm feelin' a lot better this week, actually."

"Really? What about that Rogers kid?" Bucky got a kick out of the way the old man called him the 'Rogers kid' despite the fact that he had told the man Steve's name multiple times.

"He's fine... I think." Mr. Fulherty gave him an inquiring look.

"I haven't really seen in a while."

"Does it have anything to do with that?" he pointed to the light shiner Bucky was still sporting.

Bucky cringed at his own carelessness. He should've found some way to cover it up, but in the hecticness of getting there, he forgot. "Uh... maybe."

"That's a shame."

"Yeah," Bucky replied awkwardly.

"Well, I hope the two of you hash it out."

"What?" a realization of how what they were just talking about could be taken out of context made him feel stupid for how blind he was today. He felt like a dope. "Oh, no. I-this wasn't him. It was- he didn't—I just don't want him to get worked up about it, so I'm waiting 'till it heals a little more."

"Hmm, well that's good I guess. Anyway, do you want to get to painting?"

"Is that what we're gonna be doing?"

 

 

_One summer, maybe a few years ago, if Bucky's memory served him correctly, the orphanage had taken it upon themselves to renovate the faculty rooms and offices. Like usual, the actual sectors devoted to the kids were neglected and judged to be suitable as is. The adults, on the other hand, needed such glorious improvements, such as new carpet, updated fireplaces, and more puffy and comfortable furniture._

_The reasoning behind the idea was a strictly authoritarian privilege to know, but they still had every adolescent pulled from their schooling or work and shoved into certain rooms to do basically all of the drudgery and effort._

_“It teaches you the respect of those older than you and good carpentry skills”, Manchester had said when he called for a meeting the night before work began. Of course, anyone who could think for themselves knew that was bull because everyone knew that Abraham itself was bull._

_In spite of all their complaints, they knew that the assignment would go off without a single revolting hitch. The institution had trained them to become dutiful and compliant. Whether that observation was considered a good or bad thing was still up for perpetual debate._

_Bucky was sent to work on Mr. Francis’ office. He was considered third in command at Abraham behind Kalrem and Manchester. Taking only into account the exterior view of the orphanage, one would assume it to hold not many people, but it’s surprising what could be accomplished if you shove the actual children into a designated two rooms on the second floor and leave the rest of the tenement for the faculty. In total, eight members were of power in the house._

_Manchester was Headmaster. Kalrem was headmistress, yet still under the command of Manchester. She had two other mistresses to assist her with the younger boys. Elmer Francis was said to be in charge of everyone under Kalrem and Manchester but usually remained in his office taking care of expenses and food rations and such and such. Finally, Eugene Broderick controlled their medical room, and Patrick Rollins was their cook. Nineteen boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen had a room to themselves and the same was true for the boys eleven to five, estimating to be only fifteen within those guidelines._

_No one younger than five was permitted to be taken into the orphanage. They would explain on multiple occasions that the insufficiency of infants and toddlers was due to overcrowding but Bucky knew they merely found such youth to be more of a hassle than what they were worth. Bucky had also assumed that the only reason that these intolerable bozos kept the jobs they obviously despised was because they were surrounded by a falling economy of copious men scouring to the utter edge of the working class’s boundary for any type of work. Perhaps they had started in their journey of social work with a fully compassionate agenda and wishes to help poor little orphans. Obviously, something diseased that goal-oriented path along the way._

_Francis’ quarters were set to be repainted. The walls at the time were laden with an odd ombré of darker, bland green, eventually spanning to the lower, brighter green. At first glance, it wasn’t crazy to assume that the designer decided to get a little risky with the pattern, but if you decided to take a closer look, that darker collage of forest green at the top was only due to years of accumulation of dirt of all sorts and more than a few leaks from whatever was above said room. The water damage was also apparent all the way through the grey ceiling, with scattered, dry rings of moisture making their rounds across the entirety of the cap of the office. Those brazen effects to the ceiling were neglected for the time being though and Bucky, as well as a few other boys, luckily including Darius, were given big buckets of a pale yellow paint and many brushes._

_They all went to work, setting up at different corners and sides, Bucky and Darius automatically setting up their stands right by each other so they could sneakily chat while Manchester made a roundabout to other factions of the house to check on other groups’ signs of progress, with Alec trailing behind him with a clipboard in his hand as he scampered along with his idol like a thirsty dog, silently begging for attention. They went on like that in a disorganized rhythm of talk and work._

_Swipe, ‘You should’ve seen the deal I got from trading some of my cigs to this guy.’ Swipe, swipe, swipe, ‘You hear about what’s going on over in Europe, right?’ Swipe, swipe, ‘I read this article about this new science guy. Seems like a big deal.’ Swipe, ‘The factory just hired a dame to take over for her husband since he got shipped out. Can you believe that?’ Swipe, ‘His name’s Stan… or Sarge… Stark.’ Swipe._

_Their transactions went off in perfect synchronism with the ratio of how much new color they continued to paint over the old tainted swatch. The repetitive cycle slowly turned mildly balsé, yet, being the pedant that Manchester was, when he stopped by the room again and saw that Bucky had skimmed over a tiny portion of the quadrant of wall to his left, Manchester sought out to hit the back of he with the handle of his cane and stated with conviction that he ‘missed a spot’._

_Not soon after the older man left, did Gilbert step off of his ladder in the other corner of the room, because of course, it was Bucky’s luck that the one who oh so clearly hated him was to be grouped with him. He slyly weaseled his way to where Bucky and Darius paused to exchange a few terse words, and not so subtly nudged Bucky in the direction of the still drying wall in front of him, leaving the other with no way to rebalance considering he was standing on a three-foot-tall stand to reach higher up on the wall, leaving a large gap of between the wall and Bucky vacant, except for the floor so far below. He practically body planted right into the wet paint-laden plaster before pushing himself off of the wall to see the body size disturbance he did to it and his own clothes and face. It all had happened so fast that the idea of putting his hands out to wean off more damage than what happened only came after._

_Darius stood in shock beside him while Gilbert nonchalantly receded back to his ladder, muttering ever so quietly that Bucky had truly ‘missed a spot’. Bucky felt like he was the only one who actually heard it, his face turning distinctively pale and heat rising in his face, whether because of rage or embarrassment, he never was able to discover since Manchester decided to visit again only a few seconds later. His face washed over with a poorly disguised annoyance way beyond the normal confines of vexation you feel when a pesky sibling steals something from your room._

_Bucky nervously stared at the superior as the latter strutted across the room. Manchester shot out his cane again, but this time aiming it downwards and hooking the handle around a leg of the stand Bucky was on and pulling it hard. Bucky ended up dazed on the ground, winded and only seeing Manchester’s vindictive face above him, swarming and multiplying as he reiterated both his and Gilbert’s earlier statements._

_“You missed a spot.”_

 

 

“Oh, I think you missed a spot, right there.”

Bucky looked at where Clevis had pointed, and he saw the large contrast where only some darker blue covered the old baby blue that they were working on painting over. “Oh, right, sorry,” Bucky apologized before hurriedly running his brush over the area.

“Hey, no worries—just keep a more open eye. Mine are getting too old to function right. ‘S why I hired some young ones.”

Bucky laughed at what hopefully was meant to be a playful joke. He liked working for Mr. Fulherty. He wasn’t yelled at for making a minor mistake. He wasn’t being chronically chastised for working too slow, even if he wasn’t going slow at all.

The other’s house was like the calm before and after the storm. Bucky could easily imagine the fantastical flickering lightning clouds revolving around himself smoothly being wished away as soon as he stepped a single foot inside the doorframe. It was almost the same as what happened when at Steve’s, but the house wasn’t the haven in that analogy. It was the tiny-framed guy that inhabited it.

Another positive to doing jobs for Mr. Fulherty was that he could start up a chat and he wouldn’t have to keep it on the down-low as to not get punished, both because Mr. Fulherty _was_ the boss, and he was a friendly type of guy, sometimes even sparking up a subject himself.

They were working on a room almost the equivalent to the size of Francis’ at the orphanage, but with how personalized this one seemed, the juxtapositions far outweighed the similarities. Clevis explained that it was Diana’s room and that she was dreaming of a makeover for her upcoming birthday, so Mr. Fulherty, being the seemingly outstanding grandfather he was, complied in secrecy so it would still be a partial surprise for her when she got back from some mysterious trip with her boyfriend.

Bucky knew he didn’t know the old man too much, but that innocuous ignorance sometimes weighted on him. It felt like Fulherty knew everything about him, which, in a twisted sort of way, was a bit offsetting, but Mr. Fulherty was known for knowing everything about everyone without being a gossip like people like that usually tended to be.

Bucky didn’t know what job he housed that would supply him with such luxuries in the Depression. He knew nothing of the other’s family tree besides Diana, and he was only insightful about the fact that, upfront, Clevis seemed to have a caring attitude, inevitably being the only feeling factor of his personality that Bucky was aware of. How did the guy do under stress? Did he have other grandchildren? Did they live there like Diana? What about his children? Was he abusive when things got too hard like a lot of the fathers and grandfathers Bucky had heard of at school? He hoped not. Was he sad all the time like the outcasts at the bars were? Was he just good at hiding it?

Bucky tried to reel his mind back into the present, thoughts attempting to grab a new random subject to advertise for a start to a new discussion.

“This is a nice color.” He said tentatively, addressing the paint in the numerous cans around the room. This is a nice color? Really? Stupid.

Fulherty looked over his shoulder at Bucky, considering they were across the room from each other and smiled. It was hard to place whether that smile was frivolous enjoyment from Bucky’s blatant lack of conversational skills at the time, or if maybe the statement wasn’t as superficial as Bucky first thought and maybe, just maybe, they were going to have a conversation about paint, an odd subject to say the least, but Mr. Fulhertys eyes seemingly disagreed.

“Yeah,” he agreed, turning back around to continue painting. “It’s her favorite color… figures.”

“Sir?”

“Oh, all I mean is that it was her mother’s favorite too… and my wives.” He stated that fondly.

“Must run in the family,” Bucky joked.

“Mhmm.”

“Where are they, Diana’s mother and grandmother I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. I’ve just… never seen them.”

“Welp, I suppose you wouldn’t‘ve,” Clevis replied in an unreadable tone. The way everything around them seemed to zero out, silence, focusing on the old man singularly, as though all other subjects needn’t be reflected on left nothing but uneasiness swirling in his stomach. His brain peculiarly made it of paramount importance that Bucky realize the heaviness that was unintended to be laced in his plain question. It was like the part of his brain that wasn’t supposed to function in a problem-solving way indeed solved the problem, but it couldn’t send the information to Bucky because that wasn’t its innate duty.

Bucky allowed the quietude to envelop them for as long as he could before the next question seemed to slip out of his mouth, unrestrained. “I’m sorry sir, but what does that mean?” Who knew? Maybe Bucky was being little overdramatic. He probably read the situation completely wrong. The fully erroneous way he just assumed the worst from Clevis’ face could quickly be summed up to Bucky not exactly being in best optimistic shape from certain things that had occurred as of late.

“Well, they both passed away a few years back, sadly.”

“Oh, I-I’m sorry. I didn’t think that-“

“Oh no you’re fine,” Fulherty mitigated, turning to him briefly to front a soft smile, “It’s natural for young minds to be curious. Diana’s mom, my daughter, Blanche, had been living with us ever since she gave birth. There was a fire, and Diane and I were the only ones who got out. That was a little while before we moved here.”

Come to really think of it, Bucky didn’t have any recollection of them until not that long ago. From assumption, he thought that they had been there even longer than him, and he simply never saw them around until a few years ago. Bucky didn’t try and think of a reply, opting to simply continue with his job and wait until the amply somber news had made its rounds and eventually dispersed, allowing a new subject to gain scope in order to allow the time to tick by faster.

After finishing all of the walls, Bucky helped Mr. Fulherty refurbish the room with some old and some new furnishings. Bucky didn't know Diana extremely well, but he knew that she'd like it when she got back. It was powdered with bright blue luster, the definition of soft and tough if that made any sense.

When they were fully complete, Clevis invited him to the parlor for a drink, albeit his diluted with plenty of water while Fulherty had the full version but still holding that divine tang of Laphroaig. The quality was foreign to his taste-buds but certainly more than welcome. It was only when Bucky was half-through his crystal cup that they began to talk.

“So, how're we gonna sort out the profit, hmm?” Fulherty inquired, rummaging through his paint splattered, gabardine pants.

“I'm not sure,” Bucky began, “You hired me. I don't want to insist on a price you don't feel I have a right to.” It was sort of a lie. Bucky was internally praying to whatever kind of real deities that were out there for a little bit of luck. He'd be working four hours tonight, giving him a little more than a dollar, but it wasn't enough for the impending interest he forgot to pay. Steve wouldn't be able to get any solid cash until a new production of something or other popped up at the theater, scraping for pennies on the sidewalk with offers of personal caricature sketches to passerbys.

“What's your normal profit, James, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Thirty an hour.”

“Okay then… we started at ten this morning, and we got done at—” he looked at the clock behind the bar they sat at, “—about one, so that means that you'd get—excuse my math, I'm rusty—um ‘bout ninety cents?”

Bucky was dumbstruck for a minute, watching for the older man's horrible fib, the terrible jest he decided to play on a poor boy and think it wouldn't hurt like a fall on Brooklyn ice when he said Bucky truly only got ten measly cents from the labor. “What?” he said in the end.

“What? Is the math wrong?”

“No-I—why so m-much?”

“Well, I'd say you did a lot.”

“But ninety cents, sir… that's just too much.”

“And who says that?”

“Um, well, I do, but-”

“Then maybe you should learn you deserve a bit more,” Fulherty stated strongly before walking off into the hall, leaving Bucky to ponder his thoughts anxiously.

It was a joke. It had to be. He let a rueful burst of laughter suddenly escape his lips like a mad man. Pleading internally that Fulherty hadn't heard a thing, he covered his mouth and the slip of elation, simmering the hopeful fire. It wasn't true.

It was true.

Fulherty returned minutes later with something rattling in his hand. “Sorry about that,” he apologized, walking over to the inside of the bar and meeting Bucky, who was now parallel to him, from the other side, “Thought I had enough on my person, but I had to grab a little extra.” Smiling brightly, he poured the coins onto the counter between them.

“Sir, no.”

“What’s the matter?” Genuine worry seemed to be plastered on his face. Bucky guessed he himself was probably as pale as ghost.

“That's too much.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, truly. You already gave me that loaf last week. How could you possibly be giving me all this stuff? You've got a family to look out for.”

“And I have a good job. James, I'm not taking that money back, so you can either take it or it'll slowly be whisked away by the terrible draft in this room.”

They downright had a staring contest before Bucky finally reached out a hesitant hand and slid the clinking metal into his cupped hand. “Thank you… so much.”

“Don't worry about it. You can go now if you want,” he said, leaning a little on the counter. He grimaced as though something struck him. “And, yeah, you don't have to worry about me telling Ms. Kalrem if you get a few free hours. I'll tell her I needed you ‘till your shift.” Bucky's brows furrowed. “I kind of learned that mistake after she phoned me, and I said you weren't working here. She said that she would make sure you got what you deserved. Still, don’t take that as an indicator that I like being your scapegoat...or that I condone you lying.”

Although the usual response to finding out about someone else's ‘punishments’ tended to a mixture of pity and cringe, Clevis just looked guilty. “Sorry about that.”

“You're okay,” Bucky assuaged hesitantly as he rubbed the back of his neck, an absent, yet habitual quirk he had whenever confronted with something he couldn't exactly cover with his collected manner. He followed it by a rueful apology about his lie.

The conversation was getting increasingly tense every second, not in a bad way per se, but awkward and maybe a little overdue for an end.

“Thank you, again for—” he shook the cents in his hand, “—this.”

“Don't fret James.”

 

Time was usually an ambivalence to itself. Sometimes it was so short and so spontaneous, it'd be hard to decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. And when you did have a lot of it, sometimes it was a curse or a blessing or both. Bucky always wished for time, a moment where he didn't have to haul something heavy front point A to point B, didn't have to receive glares from Gilbert's gang or undergo reprimands from Kalrem with nothing but utmost discipline, maybe a moment only to himself, a moment with Steve where the other's body didn't decide to betray itself and send its host into bouts of sickness and incorrigible limbs.

Now, in a twist of annoying irony, his palette of thing he always wanted to do but never had the leeway to undergo was blank. He left Fulherty's and was so excited to actually have a few hours to himself, but when nothing came to him, he realized his inexperience with freedom like that— that let you roam around a city without having a severely strict time restraint—was so alien and enigmatic that it baffled him. So instead of doing something considered the pinnacle of fun, which wasn't really an option anyway with his shortage of usable money, he settled for visiting the river bank.

It was getting colder by the day, and with every shift in the seasons, the water threatened to freeze over more and more, but for now, edging into November climate, it resisted and Bucky was able to watch as the water swayed across the bed so smoothly like it was a sheet of fine silk.

He sat on a bench situated near the edge of the concrete platform separating him from the soft waves and took in the beauty. He worked around the docks for hours at a time yet never found it in himself to be able to actually captivate what he was looking at when he worked. The words he could use to describe it’s perplexity and strength grew insurmountable, whooshing through his brain in great colonies of adjectives and adverbs.

He let his years of schooling take over as he pulled the book Steve got him from his pocket and laughed as he finally remembered that the book was called _The Waves_ , as though egging on his desired transactions even more so. Then he scoured the endless depths of his jacket for a pen or a pencil. Surely he found it suitable to place one in there at one point or another because he always thought that to be the best decision. He had a bad niche of doing that, playing out the endeavors the day may take him through and shoving any possible item ideally adequate to aid in them in his beloved jacket. It wasn’t the best when it added to the weight he had to take while working.

The worst part about it was that he usually forgot that he put it in there at the end of the day, despite the obvious added weight, and it was left to await it’s awakening again while it sat in the hidden crevices of fabric. It was one of the excuses he made to visit Steve whenever possible after work, so the other could fondly reproach him for his forgetfulness.

Luckily, he found a pencil and flipped to the page separating the publication information and the start of the story, blank and inviting, and he began to scribble the words that came to him. A millisecond of guilt assaulted him, reminding him of how Steve has toiled to buy his book for his friend, and surely it wasn’t so he could write chicken scratch on it, but Virginia Woolf would be so proud, Bucky believed.

Like when he was painting for Clevis, time passed, a dissatisfying thing to happen when you’re actually liking what you’re doing. The page filled up and he was soon looking through the book for more epistolary awaiting areas to describe great fantasies that water brought him. Once he wrote over the back of the outer front title page and the front of the back page, he settled for stopping there and actually finishing the book itself. He turned to the page he had folded over for a bookmark and began to read until the sun began to descend and Bucky’s assumption skills told him it was getting close to his shift. 

He got to the docks just in time. It wouldn’t‘ve taken so long if he hadn’t obstructed his easy path there with trying to finish the last pages of the book as he walked.

He clocked in at the office and gave a curt nod and a smile to the secretary, a young dame with pretty hair who he always forgot to put a name to. The shipments were slow today. The current of trade and transportation never stopped dilapidating and then building itself back up again. It was never a solid estimation, so Bucky never bothered, just going with the flow of things and finding out when he got there.

Though the tide was slow, the luggage was bigger than normal, so in the end, it evened out. Men shuffled back and forth, eventually blurring together as the piles of needed things that had to be moved dwindled down before piling up again when another ship came in. Sweat accumulated on his heated forehead and he was quick to wipe it off as soon as possible. Grime began to collect on his clothes and he had no choice but to comply with its want for a stable home.

Familiar faces brushed sporadically across his peripheral, too quickly gone for him to greet them. The shipping docks were coined to be a temp job to some, to others a disgrace or a last resort, and to the ones who had no other choice a necessity.

Every job had a routine and their routine was in and out, just like that, no fraternizing with acquaintances or even good pals. The docks weren't a place to catch up with old buddies, that is; until lunch break came along.

Lunch break was more of an overall title instead of being solid eating hours since a lot of guys didn't or couldn't bring lunches to work. Bucky usually wandered through the nearby streets, turning at the busy blocks so he didn't have to hungrily dream about the sandwich some guy was shoving in his face.

He wasn’t about to hit the breadlines. Others needed that food more than him. He was good, He was okay. There was worse going on in people’s lives out there.

The constant rumble of voices revolved around him as he passed by busy streets and blended into crowds of multiple people, and then the noise would easily taper away after turning into a vacant way, wind whistling to and fro to keep itself occupied since no one was there to fill it's void but itself.

He recognized he was wavering on an unsteady territory, an unconfirmed red-light district if you will. The sketchiness had become accustomed to him, so it wasn't like a little toddler scared of the shady man in a black overcoat or pretty women wearing something just a little too scandalous.

He was surprised when he heard a grunt coming from the upcoming turn into an alley he was about to pass. Everything beforehand had been so quiet, so peaceful. His mind quickly flashed to Steve, being stupid and picking a fight with someone he was a mouse compared to, but Steve would never be in this part of town, would he?

He cautiously peeked his head around the corner, the odd juxtaposition of the dark of the narrow path and the blinding sun right outside made it hard for his eyes to adjust. He thought he saw a tall shadowy figure of a man leaning unsteadily on the brick of the building that made up a side of the alley, head thrown back a little. He grunted and Bucky looked down, a little uncomfortable at what he may guess to be found.

The man against the wall had both arms draped over a back of the head level with his hips. Bucky's heart skipped a beat as he went to turn away and give them some privacy but realized the head going back and forth on the man's junk had short hair. A small glimpse of the face said that he was a boy.

Bucky couldn't find it in himself to look away, shocked and so befuddled and confused. That wasn't how it was supposed to go, right? It was a guy and a gal, not two guys. It was like putting incompatible with incompatible, oil with water. Was it even allowed? Bucky had heard of people talking scorn on it, calling the ones that liked it like that vile and inhumane; disgusting. He became accustomed to thinking the same—why wouldn’t he?

Why could he not just turn away right now? It wouldn’t be that hard, a simple use of a few muscles, some well-working feet. God, how could Bucky be so dim to never consider the possibility that this happened? _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ People of all kind needed that kind of alleviation too. Red districts were filled with vice and promiscuity. Why couldn’t the gals share a bit of territory with the boys?

He dazed out so much that he forgot that this was a private ordeal, and he was suddenly standing in the middle of the opening to the alley, gauging.

The man getting his… assortments checked out moaned before looking his way. The stark white of his eyes widening contrasted so fiercely that it was like two miniature lights in the dark of night, giving Bucky nothing more than a hectic glance before he was shoving the boy helping him out off and to the ground. He hastily shoved himself back into his pants and grabbed the shocked guy off the ground by the collar of his shirt and punched him.

“Get off me!” he shouted vilely before he ran away. The boy on the ground spat something out, probably blood and tried to get up. He caught a glimpse of Bucky and froze.

Bucky broke out of his trance and ran forward. That seemed to panic the boy and he got more frantic with his movements before Bucky tried to placate him. “I-I'm so sorry. I didn't-I didn't uh… mean to interrupt, I-”

“So you're not gonna pummel me?” he asked in a gruff, slightly familiar voice.

“I—what?”

“You gonna ‘punish me for my sins’?” he mimicked a different voice, deeper and more throaty, mocking it in bitterness, probably something personal. Bucky ignored it as he flustered for an answer. “No, I just-I wanna help you up.”

There was a pause, “Oh.” He stuck out his hand where he was sitting on the ground wiping his nose.

Bucky looked at it dumbfounded. The guy shook it for some kind of emphasis probably and it finally clicked in Bucky's slowly churning brain. “Oh, right!” He pulled the other up, then shrinking away, unsure of what to do. The other boy didn't seem too keen on sharing either, still dusting his shirt and pants off.

Finally, he looked up, and the light was nice enough to provide Bucky with enough luminescence to reveal the others face. Bucky was pretty sure his own mouth was gaping.

“P-P-Peter,”

The redhead looked up at him suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. “How do you know my name. Do I know you? What—you gonna go blabbin’ on me now?!”

“No, it's just… I remember you from Mr. Fulherty's” Bucky's head was still trying to wrap around the idea of what he had seen, what they were doing, why it was so hard to look away, run away even. His head was in a fog of half-comprehensible thoughts. It's probably why he missed half of what Peter, one-hundred percent Peter from Mr. Fulherty's who had stolen his job, had said.

“Hey!” Peter snapped, reeling him back in. Bucky lifted his head because he apparently lowered it at one point or another.

Peter looked him over, face proceeding to wash over in realization. “O-h, yeah. I remember you.”

“What were you- you-” the start of the question blubbered out before he could help it. “What were you… doing?”

Peter raised an eyebrow like he was evaluating the mess that was Bucky critically. “You know, with that guy?”

“Well, I'd hope it's pretty obvious.”

“But… why?”

“You know,” he began ruefully. Bucky shook his head. “I need the money.”

“But you got so many other jobs you could have. You-”

“At this time in the year? Are you joking?”

“Well, but you… you're not a g-”

“I ain't no dame? Wow, really? I didn't know that.” Peter laughed, still with a suspicious glint to his eyes.

“I don't get it.”

“Y'know them closeted fellas need a little relief too, right?”

“Closeted?”

“Fairies, the ones still in hiding! God, don't you know anything?”

“Apparently not… I'm sorry that guy did that to you. I won't tell.”

“That's a relief,” the other muttered.

“So, Mr. Fulherty… that isn't usual, to get those jobs?”

“Usually when I get there, they're already taken, My luck I guess.”

A terrible thought sidled into his brain. “He doesn't... he isn't asking you for…”

“What? Oh God, no.”

Bucky nodded, digesting the only relief he could swallow at the tense moment.

“Are there a lot of other guys… like you?” Bucky asked.

“Why are you gettin’ all chatty? You literally just watched two fags gettin’ at it, and you wanna know more about me?”

Bucky tried to think of something. In truth, he really didn't know why he hadn't just run away after what he saw, but he was there now, and he was curious, and his ratty old shoes were refusing to dart like an increment of himself was pleading them to do.

“I'm just wondering... I swear I ain't no rat or nothin’. Jus’ wanna know. You don't have to answer.”

Peter settled against the wall the man had leaned against and huffed a big sigh. “Well… yeah, there are a few. We all share some space a few blocks from here. We look out for each other.”

“Are you… you know a qu-queer or d'you just do it for the money.”

Peter pulled out a cigarette and match set out of his pocket, igniting the tobacco and drawing it to his lips as he looked up. “I'm what you'd call… ambiguous,” he smiled cockily, “I like the few girls who come to me, but I also like the guys, doesn't really matter to me in the end anyways, s'long as I get the cash…its good cash, you know that?” he asked, looking at Bucky.

“Sorry, don't spend my days researchin’ the lives of prostitutes.” It got a big laugh out of Peter and Bucky loosened up a little, letting a smirk creep onto his lips, shy but still there, once he was sure the title didn’t offend Peter like he was scared it would.

“Guess you wouldn't. Still, lots of them rich folks come by all the time. They're usually the worst, but they give you good money.”

“How much?”

“Mmm… on average? I'd say maybe a dollar-twenty to a dollar. The stacked ones give maybe two bucks.”

“A client?!”

“Mhmm, not enough to make a real living off of, but it could save ya when you're in a hole or just really beat.”

They stayed quiet for a while, the wind taking over the silence again, chatting heartedly to itself. Bucky's mind swirled still, but more with curiosity than stress now. “When I saw you at Fulhertys, I thought I remembered you from school.”

“Same with you.”

“Do you still go?”

Peter seemed hesitant to reply. “Used to be able to juggle the two, but that was before my family got more in dept, and I had to do it more and more. M' dad found out how I was gettin’ all the cash that was helping us out, and instead of praising me and apologizing for what I had to do, he shoved me in the car.”

“Where was he takin’ you?”

“A conversion institution.”

“I don't—d'you mean-”

“Yup… taking away the queer with cool things like lobotomies and electric!” he replied with a dramatic and sarcastic flair and a shake of his hands. The void that the sentence made was a little too obvious to miss.

Bucky winced, “S-So you went to that camp?”

“Hell no—jumped out of the car and ran away when he slowed at a corner on the street.”

“Jesus.”

“Haven't seen him, my mom, or my sister since… pity.”

“M' sorry.”

“Don't be,” Peter said blandly. “It was my choice. Who knows—maybe those places really do work.”

Bucky decided it fit to just not answer.

“You ever think of it?” Peter asked expectantly.

“What—conversion camps? No- No, would you- I don't- I'm not-”

“I mean doing favors like these for money.”

“Oh.”

“I know it isn't exactly on the beam, but I think you'd benefit from the profits.” Peter scanned his outfit up and down, assessing the patchy jacket, the worn pants, and his scuffed shoes.

Bucky thought in depth before answering. “I don't know… not a lot of dames come by, do they? How would I even make it by with those chances?” Even considering it would be dreadful. What would Steve think of him? The money sounded great but at the cost of something else. How would he hide it? He wouldn't. He wouldn't because he wasn't going to do it; simple. Why was he even considering this? He should shut up, right now. Yeah.

“You could do guys too.”

“What? No. I'm-I'm not… not like you. I don’t-”

“Hey, easy, calm down,” the other said, coming closer and putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder. “You don't have to be a queer to do guys. Like you said, s'only for the money… You know, I could teach ya the ropes if you'd like?”

“I-I,” Bucky stammered, “I think I have to go.”

Peter waited for a second, looking at him with something unreadable in his eyes before backing up. “Okay. If you wanna come by again, m'always around here.”

“Uh...maybe. I have to get back to work.”

“Alright… see ya.”

Bucky practically ran away, off the street and back into the wards of people. He stopped by a shop to look in. The owner had a clock hanging in the wall parallel to the front window. He was a few minutes away from the end of break. He sprinted to the docks, allowing the cold to wipe away all nerves from one thought and applying them to the other. 

 

 

Joe, the foreman on call that day, waved him goodbye as he left the main office. It was nine at night, and he had an hour to make it back to the orphanage. The usual time it took was around twenty minutes. Steve's house was on the way, so he decided to take a shot and see if he was home yet. His earlier implications for not wanting to see Steve were a little worn after a week. His bruises were a lot less noticeable, and if Bucky angled himself just right when they were talking, Steve wouldn't see a thing.

What they were going to talk about though he had no idea, but they always found something, even if it was just the current random turn of events, something like that. As sun set down for dusk to pear out, the cold winds increased, sending Bucky into reluctant bouts of shivers every time one hit him full force. He wrapped his jacket tighter around his midriff, clamming his teeth shut to extinguish constant annoying chattering of them.

He turned at every block and hovered by the walls of the streets, hoping there was some scientific way that it could lessen the frigid blow on himself.

Eventually, he found himself at the door he was seeking. He walked up Sarah's- Steve's front steps and looked into the window, the window that peers right into the heart of the house, evidently the grand window that Steve's finds innocuously acceptable to leave uncovered by a sheet. They may not have many fortunes, but neither did lots of others in the dilapidated thing called Brooklyn, and they had to protect everything of value, so when your greatest portal to the sight of the inside of your humble abode is showcased brazenly, it gives you a sliver of apprehension despite yourself. That reasoning never seemed to work with trusting tiny-framed-Stevie though.

The couch wasn't occupied, and all the lights were off. He jiggled the knob of the door and found it to be locked. Disappointment crept up. How was it that the one time he's sees it fit to finally confront his dear friend after a week of paranoia that he's gone.

Salvaging through the back corners of his brain left him concluding that Steve must’ve been out trying to find anyone who'd like a pretty picture since when he listed off the days he was asked to come in and conjure up a nice poster for whatever the bosses called for at the theater that upcoming week or month, it did not include the likes of that Wednesday. He must've been on his way back. He never stayed out past ten.

Freaking Tiny-framed-Stevie trying to help out with their impending bill he supposes. Steve didn't even put up a fight about it this time around, just went out and overworked himself instead of bickering with the imperturbable force called ‘Buck’.

He lifted up a random big rock that always had been in the corner of the porch to see if maybe Steve had listened to his other advice about keeping the key at home, just hidden, in case during one of Steve’s _many_ fights, the opposing team would ransack him for anything else that they could rob. He took it with him.

Bucky did a slight _tsk_ under his breath and turned around. It was just the ways of life telling him that even with his head down low that Steve would notice the discoloration swimming over his face and call him out for it, giving him the stink eye until he admitted who did. By that point, it was up to Steve what he would do, but it wouldn't shock Bucky to hear around the grapevine of Abraham that Gilly had caught a twig of a guy between his knuckles while he was working.

Then Bucky would visit to find him all bloodied up in a myriad of bruised bones. On second thought, maybe going to Steve's wasn't all in all the greatest of options.

He stepped a foot out of the perimeters of the Roger's oh so tiny bit of yard and saw sleek black Oxfords blocking his way. He looked up at Hollister as the latter gazed at him with that bank worker charm. “Hello, Mr. Hollister.” he greeted the other like the nice person he was, fully aware he was about to get chunks of euphemistic threats thrown right in his face.

“We just seem to keep bumping into each other—don't we?” he laughed over-enthusiastically, threatening his toupee to flip back. Bucky forced a smile. “Anyway,” he began again, barely giving the other room to say anything as he not so subtly patted down his glop of disturbed forehead hair, “Is Mr. Rogers there?”

“S'funny; it's like the world is tryin’ to keep ya away from him. Every time you’re around, he's busy or not there. Now that's a shame,” Bucky charaded with faux sympathy.

Hollister's gigawatt of a smile trickled at the edges at Bucky's not so subtle jibe, but he took it with impressive stride. He readjusted the grin like it was a melting piece of gunk, and he had to fix to its position again. “Yes, very funny… um anyway, since you’re here, do you mind letting me in on when that interest will be getting to me?”

“By the end of the month; you can count on it.”

“Well that's good, cause loans aren't something we play around with, and they shouldn't be under the care of adolescents in my opinion.” he pointed a finger at Bucky like he was disciplining a child.

Bucky gritted his teeth. "Yes, thank you, I am aware.”

“Great! Please just send Mr. Rogers my way when you see him again. I wish I could visit him at his jobs, but they're a little er… unstable. I really want to go in depth with him about the ways I found we could help him out since this terrible passing of Ms. Rogers and all.”

For a brief second, he thought maybe Hollister was a good guy, but he just played his cards good, the real canal to his true intentions was splayed out perfectly in his crinkled eyes. “Sure will do. I'll tell ‘im next time I see ‘im.” No, he wouldn't. 

 

 

He got back to the orphanage just in time for the last offer of dinner. Darius wasn't there. He must've already went to sleep, so Bucky chose to sit alone to his devices, playing mindlessly with what was left of the scrap they offered for the first servings of dinner. Once he heard Rollins shout to the few kids eating that they only had ten minutes left, he quickly scarfed it all down, the knot in his stomachs hoping that Steve somehow found something to eat.

There was food in the cupboards of the house, but it was always fluctuating between the poor concept of plentiful or blatantly bare. The icebox hadn’t been really able to stock for the whole month, considering the increase in ice block prices in the area. They made do with what they had, even though it was obvious that if it was how it was going to be like with Sarah gone, they were more than likely on a path to poverty times infinity.

When he was on his way to bed, he was so distracted about the idea about getting a nice night's rest that he completely didn't notice the person in front of him before he collided with them. Luckily, neither of them fell, grabbing onto each other's forearms for equal support.

With rushed apologies and righting up of their stances so it was assured they still weren't at risk of falling, Bucky looked up and realized it was Eugene. Eugene was Bucky’s favorite by far of the staff. He was closer to Bucky's age, considering he was only in his mid-twenties and he had a ghastly habit of actually greeting and talking to kids at the orphanage with some mutual, non-patronizing, ill-supremacistic intent. He wasn't a real doctor, only a medical student, but Manchester could pay less for him than someone who already had a Ph.D. Besides, it wasn't like he was curing some kids cancer. He was only there to supply them with medications, do check-ups and the occasional healing of something here or there and point them in the general direction of the actual doctor for the serious stuff.

“Bucky, nice to see you!” he said happily once he saw who he had bumped into.

Bucky smiled back, “You too, Eugene. Where've you been? Haven't seen ya in a month or so.”

The other's smile brightened even further in the dim lighting, raising his left hand and brandishing the plain silver ring on one of his fingers. “Got hitched to my girl.”

“Shut up!”

“M'not kidding. God, she's the best gal you'd ever meet.”

“Seems like you're really dizzy with the dame.”

“Why wouldn't I be if I married her?” Eugene laughed.

“Hey, since you're here I was-”

“Okay, what're his symptoms?”

“What?”

“Steve—thats where this conversation is going, right?”

“Oh Eugene you know me too well,” Bucky replied enthusiastically. “He doesn't really have any bad symptoms right now. Was just wondering whether I could be doin’ more, you know? He's been coughin’ somethin’ fierce and I hear those phantoms sniffles edgin’ their way up his nose more and more. Ugh, Eugene I know this winter is gonna be all wet.”

“What'd you resort to when I was away, huh? Oh, please don't tell me you were eavesdropping on some poor geezers check-up with Dr. Marian to help you out?”

“Maybe… actually, yes,” Eugene groaned comically, but Bucky continued. “But that only told me that I should get him something called rhodanide for his blood pressure-”

“Jesus, that kid is a walking, talking box of sickness.”

“Yeah...trust me, I know. But what about for the coughs and the sniffly nose? C'mon, help me out here, Eugene.”

“M'sorry, but the only thing even close to your salary or mine that I know of would be that cough syrup.”

“But we're runnin’ out of that, and I don't want to invest in a new vile and buy it only to find out there's something better.”

“Look, I wish I could help you out. We have a goddamn literal stock of Linctus, but s'only supposed to go to you guys, no outsiders. Can lose my job over something like that.”

Bucky tried to ignore the tiny ache of let-down that anchored to him and thanked Eugene for the information anyway, watching as the other turned to the door of the hospice room, which somehow was right beside them the whole time and pulled out a shiny key.

Bucky watched as Eugene used the key to enter, promptly shutting it and shaking Bucky out of his haze of raggedness and disappointment. He went on his way, finally reaching his bed and stripping off his over clothes and hanging them over the ledge of the upper bunk. Bucky thought he heard the faint ‘goodnight’ come from Darius who he assumed to be asleep, with his body splayed haphazardly over the entirety of what little space their cots provided.

Either way, he said the same back, just as soft then plopped on his bed, letting the stiff fabric and stuffing enclose him. Imagining it was a plate of clouds usually made it more bearable to rest on, so he went with that sadly highly contrasted metaphor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only connection I made in the names with real life people was Eugene. I was watching Try Guys so I had wittle Eugene in my head while I was writing.
> 
> Breadlines is, by definition, a line of people waiting to receive free food. Charities were spawned from or contributed to this trend during WWII and The Great Depression. If you were walking around, you were likely to see great hoards of people lining up outside in certain areas because they were waiting in line to get mainly bread and soup.
> 
> A little research told me the average wage for labor work at the time, by hour, was $0.45, with a low of $0.15 and a high of $0.95. Today with an inflation calculator, that'd be $8.10 for the average, $2.70 for the low, and $17.09 for the high. The average is actually higher than today's minimum wage in the U.S. ($7.25). All in all, considering Bucky's marginally young for this work, I decided an hourly pay of 30 cents would make sense. 
> 
> Also I know it may seem weird that the bank is okay with Bucky taking care of most of the expenses, but as long as the final financial transactions, such as paying bills and stuff is supposedly hashed out by the adult, Steve in this case, and it's in his name, they really can't do anything about. Especially since the ways of getting evidence were a lot harder back then with camera being more on the uncommon side, and the fact that this was happening a lot with younger boys when their parents were out of jobs or if they lived in a single-mother household.
> 
> Red-light Districts are areas of towns or cities containing many brothels, strip clubs, and other sex businesses. They also sometimes contains drug bargains. Lots of closeted people who were attracted to the same sex were forced to hide and some had to go to these districts to find people like them and gain sexual favors for money.


	3. Inferior

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick interlude to how Steve is doing at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! Here we go! So I can positively say that everything starts rolling right after this, so I hope you enjoy and tune in to my obligatory little history lesson in the endnotes. 
> 
> Okay, it is offically 3:18am and i've been at it all night, and I have school tomorrow, so read this so my nodding off throughout today's school day will mean something, okay? Enjoy!
> 
> <3 Lili
> 
> WC: 8,230

 

_October 29, 1936: Sunday_

****

It's weird, Steve thought, how art can be smoothly conjured from the confines of only human imagination and perception alone, a good kind of strange. He remembered his matelling him about how he started drawing on the walls with anything he could get his hands on when he was just a tiny, tiny toddler, so much smaller and frailer and sickly than an average tike or an average human in general. She supposed it was him trying not to go crazy at the age of four by being locked in a damn pipsqueak room for hours at the time so no germs could catch him.

It wasn't until his magot a job at the ward that they could afford pencils or semi-good quality paper, another few years before Steve could keep his asthma under a tame basis enough to snag a few chores from neighbors here and there. Nowadays, he could dirty his fingers with charcoal pretty often since he had a marginally stable job.

At that moment, he laid across his scruffy, pernicious couch, and he undertook a restless attempt of doing something other than sleep in the form of starting yet another discursive draft. He glided his finger along a particular area of the parchment, frustrated by how the shading just didn't look right. He couldn't tell what it was though. He established the light source's area. Substantiation of symmetry came through lining up certain points with the spine of a book. Everything checked out. Why was something about it wonky then?

It also seemed funny how a human’s cognitive and abstract conceptions and perspectives of an idea or dream of said idea could be so poorly translated or disrupted by a single stroke error, a conception so meticulously thought out and constructed being destroyed so easily; a got damn mistake.

He gave up and threw the sketchbook onto the table, releasing a giant huff and falling onto the couch, quickly reproaching himself and his tiny lungs for losing a little too much air. His lungs began to scrape for breath, and he was forced to sit up and not slouch as to fix the blockage. _Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe._ The attack resided, luckily.

He got up and looked out the window for about the billionth time that day, and it was morning. It didn't worry him that Bucky hadn't come over actually. The orphanage was a hell house, but codependency didn't taper off because the other half was mandatorily occupied--stupid psychological phenomena. He'd been grumpy since he woke up. Usually Bucky could be around to joke with him or something, to risk being late just to see if his best pal wasn’t dying of boredom or loneliness in his house, to make sure he was all right, though Steve hated thinking of it that way, but at least this way Steve could go scouring the streets for ‘Up for Hiring!’ signs so he could finally exponentially help out with the storm that's been rumbling ever since a certain angel of death took a certain someone.

One would think that the closest to the deceased would be finding it hard to move on, finding it hard to detach themselves from something that had been such an emotional staple-point for them, and yet there Steve was, too worried about saving the house to even finish off his grievance.

An internal argument sparked then, reasoning that the two coincided, his mother raising him in the house, it being the only decent thing he had left of her, their memories together, struggles and triumphs, but it didn't seem to hinder that guilt-ridden blade situated in his sternum, shoved in all the way to the hilt, throwing cheap and crass admonishments right at his face, well kind of his chest, and choking his throat with a vice grip, practically screaming at him in question.

Why hadn’t he weeped into a pillow at all hours of the day? Why, oh why did he dream of brown hair and blue eyes growing weary in stress instead of his malaise mother struggling for life on a bed of sickness, like others who had lost someone they loved’s experiences had always foreboded? Why didn't he push to pay every last cent of the burial costs?

And once all the thoughts filled up and started to overflow, ruining all the other circuits he needed to fucking function, he decided to do the only thing that made sense, something he knew his ma would approve of, a catharsis for those of the human race with a certain faith.

He went to a church nearby to do confession, the same church he and his mother went to on holiday occasions sporadically, just to add to the flame.

The glossy pews had been draped with the dim flickering light of candles held in golden sconces, each row of benches draped with intricate white lace to contrast perfectly with the dark spruce underneath. A large concaved arch was engraved into the front wall, the platform of it beginning about halfway up the tall wall, so that from a centered viewer’s perspective the arch would be on the announcing priest's shoulders.

Steve wondered if they did that over-the-shoulder-thing purposefully. The figure inside the arch being a guardian over the priest thus a guardian over all. 

Within held a carving of Jesus on the cross with women underneath, some mourning, and others simply just staring, finding it baffling to see such a great and powerful man, a harbinger, the precursor of something so grand, becoming the origin of stigmata. It was easy to relate to those women in the way that they could not fathom the loss, even if they were staring directly at the morbid corpse, the empty host, right in front of them.

An organ was beside the main podium, the right side of pews perpendicular to it. The grey pipes worked like a zig-zag pattern at the top where they ended, intricately carved wood bordering the whole structure to make the consul seem more connected with the pipes that made the sound so much more angelic.

He had crept into the confessional, heart beating hard, mouth dry, and began to confess to the burdens with which he was troubled, internal damnations already so overwhelming, he trembled as he conceded every word.

Father had replied in an even and low voice, explaining that perhaps this was a sign that God did not agree with the way he was choosing to cope, or maybe his mother was stuck in purgatory because of him, that maybe she was pleading for him to go through the stages that he needed to let her go.

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't exactly understand how the man could have assumed that. Did he really feel he had to right to tell him that his mother may still be suffering because her son was having a hard time letting go? Was he right? Still, it felt as though Father had simply just told him what he was doing to his mother because of his actions. Wasn’t this supposed to be a place where he could find saving, not blaming?

He briefly thanked the minister politely before slipping out of the stall and running out as fast as he could, not being able to even bear the looks of all the historical people on the tall stained-glass windows in the walls who came to life animatedly, scorching his heart with all that he had confessed. The figures shouted at him for his sins, he sinister thoughts, said he didn't belong.

He got out of there, so frightened at what they… no, no, _he_ said, what it could mean. Was all his hard work towards becoming old dutiful and reliable really about to backfire in his face? He slammed the door to his room before rushing to his bed and kneeling over in a sign of subservience. He tried so hard to feel bad and apologize to God, but there was no way his mawould ever yell at him the things that he'd heard in his head, he hoped, he wished.

He ended up faltering off from his endless pleas, accounting for everything around him and how wrong it all felt. Why should he be praising and pleading with a man who had given him nothing but pain? What if he didn’t like faith? What if he was simply one of those hooligans that went around talking about just going with the unpredictable flow of life?

Deliberation ensued. That was what he constantly went back to before he eventually decided to stop going to church… or praying. Evidently, that meant he never transacted the prayers that Father suggested. He didn't care as much as he'd thought he would, though.

With all that had been going on, all the great large piles of shit that had implemented onto all of his good thoughts almost all the time, no one would probably blame him for being a little off, but If it made any sense whatsoever, he was worrying about _Bucky_ , Bucky who could handle himself pretty well, strong, healthy, younger than Steve yet so much more collected and always downplaying his troubles. He hadn't actually found any solidification to the idea that Bucky was struggling, but it was just a feeling, something deep down that just knew.

He knew with that weird thing that best pals discover when they’ve been by each other's side enough times to catch each other's quirks and downplays.

He grabbed his jacket and went outside. Looking to and fro, he recollected his past paths. What store had he not visited yet? Probably none. Job searching was a hassle, a hassle he went on to envisage a complex street by street deduction system for. He barely really knew what all of those words meant, but he was pretty proud of the way it sounded on his tongue. Eventually, he chose to go straight forward, to see where that took him.

Tension rose as his adversary, cold weather, decided to try and creep into the slips where fabric didn't cover his vulnerable skin. Swearing under his breath, he bundled up even tighter. He just knew Bucky was going to kill him if he got sick, well not actually. Bucky's too much of an oaf to be mad at him when he's was all wheezes and hacks.

His shoes scuffed against the road as he dragged himself up the slope of the hill. Internally cataloging all the directions he took as he turned every once in a while, just to be aware of what time he could estimate to get back at. If he got home before three in the afternoon, he could get some deeply needed nap time, maybe conjure up a few rough sketches and fix that damned shading error of the portrait he began before leaving, and still have a little leisure time to just enjoy the silence.

He hoped he wouldn't begin stressing over this and that. It usually occurred when there was nothing else to fret about. In fact, the thought of him having nothing to do, while Bucky was slaving around the dockyards in Red Hook would supplement itself just fine between the files labeled “You aren't grieving correctly even though there isn't really one way to grieve.” and  “How are you still going to be able to help out with the crisis that is your living situation when you're going to be a big bundle of germs for presumably the entirety of winter?”

Silence brought up things that no one wanted to commit to and work out until they had to. The silence was a way for your head to be completely devoid of anything, yet that anything could so easily be abducted and be replaced with a horrible decoy of faux tranquility on the outside when you were secretly evaluating every inch of everything and how it could go wrong on the inside. Silence could be pleasant for someone who knew how to properly deal with their life, but it probably wasn't a deal best suited for Steve… it was a hoot.

He passed buildings that he had already visited before, some he heard were looking for new employees through the newspaper, yet suspiciously, when he checked them out, the manager or whoever supervised new work opportunities stated that the slots were already taken. Determining whether that may be true or not was a futile attempt, one he didn’t have enough dignity and self-appreciation to rove over. Everyone was looking for work nowadays. Maybe the spots really _had been_ taken up, or maybe Store-Supervisor-Joe just didn't want the likes of a twig with skin on his payroll.

After switching to the other side of the busy street, rushing with on goers, shuffling in and out of stores, he walked by the pharmacy and looked into it to find Petunia at the counter. She lived near the orphanage, and her daughter, Lila, was clearly very fond of Bucky, so he had made a sort of mutual acquaintance with the woman. As a result, when Steve came into the pharmacy looking for some work one day, she saw him, asked him what he was doing there, and then eagerly said she could put in a good word with her boss.

The good word though didn't do much for the grouch. She felt really guilty but he assuaged her self-blame as much as he could with his own formidable disappointment.

Extreme labor made sense. He stopped going near those sights a while ago, but shelving stuff? Why did people always have to question if he was able to pick up even a flimsy got damn envelope?

She turned her head and saw him, proceeding to provide him with a rueful smile before dealing with the obnoxious customer asking her something. Steve returned it before going on. Looking for more openings was getting harder and harder. If he had had an actual list of all the places he had gone into with a fervent frisson but came out feeling any chance of winter money getting depleted further, it would’ve be embarrassingly long. Luckily, his memory kept those names intact for him so he didn't have to compare it against a giant wad of parchment. That would be depressing. He turned again onto an unfamiliar but seemingly well-known street.

A hushed cacophony of people walking around swept over him. Waves of yearning washed through him, remembering the fervent way the streets used to be filled with laughter and hearty people making deals and buying glorious luxuries, young women excitedly announcing what they wished they could buy in the store windows, older men with pipes emitting puffs or semi-opaque smoke as they chatting with bravado about world events as their wives stood next to them, gazing on with a sad hope to join in with their own worthy opinions. Now, the deals were desperate, and lines were held up as customers scoured their pockets for spare change to add to the last bit they needed for the price of their indefinite purchases. Women were left to finally speak their mind but at the cost of their husband's out on the fronts, sacrificing their lives.

It wasn't even that bad. Steve knew there'd be more to come. Achievements were growing fewer and farther apart. Ordeals like what happened at the Olympics that year, with Jesse Owens or that lady who flew a plane were growing scanter, and hope-crushing deterrents were winding their way into first place while happy-go-lucky news was falling behind quickly into fifth and then sixth, seventh and then eighth.

Finally, his feet settled in the door frame of Piggly Wiggly’s.

He sucked in an anxious breath and went in. It hadn’t been exactly vacant, but there could be three times as many people there as there were then. He ventured around, looking for a worker since no one was behind the front counter. He caught sight of a young man staring quizzically at a large shelf of boxed items with a clipboard gripped in his hand as he scribbled away at it, probably inventory. 

“Excuse me?” Steve asked just loud enough for the other to hear as he came closer.

The man turned his head towards the source of the sound, looking up and then down. Steve would be lying if he’d said it was surprising. Bucky had told him multiple times before that he had a deep voice, disturbingly disproportionate to his stature, so deep in fact that anyone would probably guess him to be six foot and broad with only the knowledge of his octave. If someone else would've said it, it probably would've stung, but Bucky's version of it had no heat, just that damn admiration that made Steve blush like crazy.

“Yes?” the man said.

Steve realized he himself had just been set in a rueful hunch with tight lips for an uncomfortable amount of time, evaluating their short first assessment of each other with a hint of dull foreshadowing reaching his assumptions. “Oh, I was just wondering I could speak with the manager?”

“Um… are you looking for something or… “

“Actually, I'm looking to get a job.”

The other let out a chuckle before he reached Steve's eyes again, the comedy dissolving from his eyes. “Yeah, okay, I'll get him.” He walked off, behind the counter and into the door behind it.

Steve shifted his weight from one side to the other, awkwardly awaiting the guy, with hopefully the manager in toll, to return. He looked to his left and saw the shelves of produce that lined the long wall. Perched above the apples were bright and vibrant pears, safely rested on the wood in which they were cradled, adorned by an obnoxious sign on the front stating in capitals the type of pears and their value.

Steve quickly looked away, painfully imagining how good those pears would feel in his stomach. When had been the last time he had gotten the taste of fresh fruit into his mouth? That was a little too upsetting to think about. Sometimes Steve considered the possibility that maybe the reason he had it hard off with all his irregularities was because he barely had a _monthly_ intake of certain substantially adequate nutritious meals, not in the way he needed.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, right?

Every day brought something different in most cases. Then there was the subject of the possibility of bulk, in which they'd each a stagnate food choice for what seemed like forever. Steve remembered one time about a year prior when they just scuffed out chunks of half gradually expiring bread since that's all Steve's macould buy in a reasonably stable succession, getting a nice discount from the man who sold it to her since he had a little crush on her.

She didn’t like manipulation and she never wanted her son to inherit those ways either, she had said, but when it came to her family, she would do anything.

Breadlines were probably one of the few things Steve and Bucky agreed on in their peculiar yet intimate way of friendship. They were people out there on the streets with nowhere to go and only the mere possibility of getting something in the line before the distributors ran out. Steve and Bucky were fine without it. They found other ways. It wasn't that hard. The only time they resorted to creeping into the stream of ragged people was for Steve's mom, late in her sickness’ progression.

Steve had been panting around as he scoured to the tiniest corners of their house for anything to scrap up for her. Even by then, he knew what he’d have to resort to because anything he had to “scour” for in his own house wasn’t going anywhere near his mother. She was worth so much more than that.

It was hard, but he eventually knew that it wasn't going to work out if he stayed with his worn mantra. So, he shrugged on his big boy pants and put his pride and his ill-humility to the test with walking up to a nearby line that had been advertised on fliers. The slips of paper had been congesting posts across the whole borough, and they just loved to contaminate Steve's acquiescing sight. He remembered stumbling into the tail of the line, an imminent and non-negotiable blush forcing its way up his cheeks.

Unlike how he imagined it all going down, no one actually took much interest in him. There were a few raised heads here and there, but nothing exactly alarming. All those said partially peaked faces eventually sunk back down again, curling up with their flimsy and ragged clothes, or just choosing to look the other way. It took a while for Steve to realize he had his head sunk the same way, another few minutes before it struck him how similar their clothes were to his own torn rags.

The line became a routine for a short period of time, at least until his mother succumbed to her illness, then it was back to the guarded charade of 'we'll find another way.'

Behind the counter, an older guy, with a graying and receding hairline walked out of the door, followed by the other employee that Steve had asked for help in the first place. The younger guy simply walked past with a brief tight smile to Steve and went back to inventory. The other took a stance in front of Steve.

"Hello sir," Steve started up with his overly prepared business lexicon, something he had to perfect in the mirror and practice repeatedly after many terrible interviews with certain employers obviously vexed by those who weren't able to perform their vowels and consonants without their natural Brooklyn twang.

It came out automatically.

He stuck out his hand and hoped that he could hold up a sturdy handshake. That was another thing that needed time to perfect. He didn't like the fact that his arms were basically clothed noodles which easily coincided with his personal distaste for his susceptibility to fail out when another had a distinctively gruffer handshake. Bucky helped him out with that one actually.

They spent a whole field day pretending to be businessmen so Steve could offer his hand to Bucky and try to control the handshake for as long as possible. There were breaks where they could laugh at the stupidity of it all, but Steve would start it back up again, determined. It took a while, but Steve thought he eventually got a slight hang of it. Still, that was a while ago. The minuscule muscle he probably gained from it was most definitely long-gone, so he guessed he just had to put up a good fight.

He was so constipated and stiffened with preparation to hold on with all his might, he kind of blacked out until he realized the older man was just watching, no sign of any oncoming receptive nerves pushing the other to mirror Steve. Steve let his arm awkwardly fall, but he kept up a great front and continued on like he didn't already know where this was going.

"I was wondering if I'd be able to be interviewed for a job here, or maybe I could acquire an application form of some kind?"

"What's your name son?" The man asked, crossing his overly hairy arms.

"Oh, right, sorry, I'm Steve Rogers, and you?"

"Call me Mr. Trunch, but that's besides the point."

"It's nice to formally meet you." Steve was assured he would be horrified to watch his own perkiness at the moment, but Trunch was apathetic, almost catatonic.

"Mhmm... what kinda job you lookin' to get?"

"Well, I don't know exactly anything specific. I could be used in many areas. I could do inventory, or work the counter. I could do janitorial work too! I already have some experience with that from over in Leow's Pitkin Theatre on Pitkin and Legion. Oh, I could restock too, and I happen to be pretty good with a pencil and some paint if you need some banners or posters for sales and such. I mean, I saw your signs, and they’re real nice, but I think I could make them better- well not- I mean- I could maybe-"

"No."

Steve's rambling finally fumbled off as his desperate heart receded back into its hermit cave. "Sir?"

"Have you looked at yourself lately, kid?"

"I- well I know I'm not exactly the pinnacle of health or anything, but I don't think that very much interferes with painting or restocking or cleaning up a bit. I can do all that stuff. I swear. I'll even take less than everyone else. I just need a job."

"Boy, I'm riskin' gettin' into lots o’ troubles lettin' you be around all my stuff. For one, it'll probably take ya ages to reach them high shelves if I'm--" He scanned Steve as a whole quickly with his eyes, making the other shrink uncomfortably in on himself. "--judging your height right. I don't have the time nor the energy to see if you actually can do _all that_ with a paintbrush, and how do I know you ain't gonna trip up sometime, maybe slip on some wet tile or get a damn shelf thrown on ya and put my business on the line when some health people coming in to investigate? We’re in hard times, boy. You surely know this." His country twang wasn't hard to pick up on, and it made it even more harsh to Steve's disappointed ear what he was hearing for some reason.

"W- well I can assure you, sir, that no health people would be really concerned for my well being. If you just give me a chance I could-"

"I don't take no chances with my store, boy."

"I understand that," Steve fraughtly trying to mitigate Mr. Trunch's concerns "I just asking for you to give me a trial or something, Anything to prove that I'm worthy of a job here-"

"Get outta here kid." Mr. Trunch grunted out. He had never once dissuaded his arms from out of their lock, entwined together on his big fat chest.

"What?"

"Scram, I said."

Steve was about to speak out when the intimidating glint in Trunch's eye beat him to the punch... but silently... if that made sense. He huffed out a big ball of hot breath and stormed out the door, not even bothering to see if anyone else had keyed into their debate about Steve's abilities.

He was so sick of this shit. What made them so equipped to presume what Steve could and could not do? If he remembered correctly, it was his body, his mind, and he knew his limits.

He careened into a nearby ally to take a breather from all the people filling up the main street. Taking a few deep breaths like Bucky taught him to do whenever he got so caught up in anger that he almost sent himself into an asthma attack, he shook his hands, imagining the tension being rung out through his thin fingers. His fingers itched for an asthma cig, but he knew the chances of getting one anytime soon was rare. He gave up on the tactic pretty quickly, superseding to kick an empty trash can with a shout of rage. The trash can actually wasn’t as empty as he first thought though, with something somehow super heavy at the bottom that Steve neglected to care about with the pain now radiating up his right foot then leg.

He keeled over, squeezing his shoes where his toes were housed inside and hissing as the applied pressure distracted him from the actual pain. He looked up and saw a few people who must’ve slowed when he shouted. “Are you okay, buddy,” a guy with a tall brunette gal on his arm asked apathetically concerned. Steve bet that the girl was the one who told him to stop so they could ask.

“Yeah, thanks, no problem here.”

The man gave a curt nod and continued on while the dame gave him a soft, lo and behold sympathetic smile. Once they were both gone, the swarms of people leveled out again, it went back to its steady ripple of blurred silhouettes. He gave himself a few more minutes to calm down a bit before emerging back into the main street, with all the rushing people to and fro.

It always happened. Why did it always happen? Why couldn’t people notice him as a person and not some sickly kid? He was nineteen for God’s sakes, not even considered a child by _law_ and yet, they saw him for what he looked like, saw him for someone who definitely couldn’t hold up a fight, definitely couldn’t catch a decent gal, definitely couldn’t do even minimal labor, couldn’t catch a break…

He began to dislike the idea of spending the rest of the day in town more and more. He’d have a limp all day, he’d be in a terrible mood, and it’d be hard to even grasp any employer's attention with the burning fact that it was so busy.

He was a joke, no not even that, couldn’t muster up the courage to make some joke without making it awkward as hell. He clenched his hands into fists and turned back around, cursing under his breath.

There was a strategic tactic to walking on traditional Brooklyn style streets, the hectic and thronged areas at least. If you were finding yourself being hustled through big clumps of walkers around you, finding the nearest wall and sticking with it so you can see how far you got and where the turns are was the best bet, not something really big, but for the easily inundated people of the world, it’ll help tons.

Steve’s mahad been a pro at everything that had to do with the city life. She said that she actually studied the way everything worked around her when she came from Ireland. She said that she probably would’ve never gotten used to it if there wasn’t a familiar face to come home to every night, Steve’s father. Both of the migrants were so overwhelmed at first, the way people acted and how everything looked was just so foreign, but they still had their roots hidden in the hearts of each other.

Steve followed her teachings just fine until he reached a posh looking store, _Rainbow Apparel Co._ according to dazzling letters emblazoned upon the marquee, and a familiar voice was shouting goodbyes to someone inside as they made their way out of the door.

It was inaudible to Steve, but the voice itself was too familiar and too unbearable to not recognize immediately. Alistair Hollister walked out, all suave looking and dallied up, showing off his pride of being part of the tiny group of bankers who _benefitted_ from the strike of '29. He was smiling all bright and gleeful, probably about whatever was in the intricately decorated bags in his hands. Maybe he got something similar to the suits that were being precariously showcased across the front window, hopefully, the ensemble that was topped off with a fedora, perhaps it could cover up the nest he liked to pretend was his hair. It was funny that he thought the color shading difference wasn't as obvious as it was, gave the man a bit of innocence to his manipulative overall epithet.

Despite the comedic undertones Steve tried to use to cover the impending doom of talking with him, he froze for too long and Hollister had half the wit to turn towards _his_ direction instead of anyone else's, because that's how luck worked out in this new world apparently.

His eyes got a little wide, and his mouth drooped open, as if melting with the fevered salesman-like adrenaline that pulsed through him as his eyes lit up, but before he could spit any advertisement or offer towards Steve, the latter was turning the opposite direction and building up all his energy to sprint into the crowd he oh-so-recently shuddered at in guilty distaste though they were just like him, trying to find something in their lives that they could control, whether that be in the ways of a job, or maybe finding a good bargain for a deal in the eclectic street, fit for all classes, sadly those classes ranged from at least Hollister to Steve... wonderful.

Steve ignored the aching need to look behind him, to see if the man was so desperate as to chase him, but who knew what the git was up for, if it advanced his career further, what of the consequences? He eventually broke free of the suffocating horde, taking only the smallest of breaths before looking each way for something to hide him. Right in front of him resided the pear, a bench situated only a few measly yards away. It sat facing the same direction Steve was looking, at the mass of water right in front of it.

"Mr. Rogers!" Steve heard Hollister's voice behind him, but when he looked, all there was were unfamiliar faces. _Hollister hadn't broken free yet... at least there's some sort of highlight..._

Steve ran over and practically jumped on the bench, laying down as to be completely obscured.

He flipped around to face the gap where the peer and the opening of the street met between two blocks of opposing side, and laid down, curled up. That way, he'd see Hollister through the panels of wood. He probably looked ridiculous, but on the other hand, was it really that absurd to witness a tattered soul presumably napping on a bench these days?

About a few seconds later, Hollister was breaking through the crowd too, looking from one direction to the other, his bags must've gotten disturbed while fighting through a mass of civilians because the sacks were satisfyingly frayed on their fancy, clean-cut edges.

All that was staying in Steve's mind within all the craziness of the situation was that he felt like one of the Lone Ranger’s imperiled, the degrading bit seeping through the playful Imagination when he remembered how the radio always said the Lone Ranger helped damsels in distress. Hollister finally walked off, and _Steve_ finally realized he was panting like crazy.

He sat back up so getting the air into his lungs wasn't as hard, but the cold air made the inhales burn his throat. He wrapped his hands around his neck and began to rub, try and imagine it's working and maybe it will, Placebo? He wouldn't be here right now if he hadn't run, hadn't run away like a baby instead of staying and being resilient enough, obstinate to speak his mind, not give in like the docile nice boy he coined himself to be over the years. He could handle Hollister, at least he could handle his obvious attempts to scam Steve out of the bank’s potential lettuce house. He wasn't dim, and he wasn't naïve, and it hurt him that Bucky kept on trying to protect him from the self-righteous prick.

He could handle himself, but, admittedly, when it came to his morale, he was a lost cause. He felt bad. His fatal flaw was that he felt bad rejecting... literally almost anyone of what they wanted, but Hollister was annoying his so much that maybe soon, the quality would weaken and he'd tell him to screw off instead of getting a pen ready before the man even proposed a deal.

It was all so overwhelming, the burn of his throat, the unintentional patronization Bucky put him through constantly, the stupid bank guy haranguing them every chance he got on the responsibilities and duties of homeowners, and that little thing that flipped his world upside down, the thing he still says is just a bad dream until he goes home and sees her stuff is gone because they sold it for the money they needed not to starve or die from sickness, sees there isn't anyone humming sweetly to a summer melody from her childhood on the farms of Ireland.

He scrubbed his face frustratingly with the heels of his hands. His nose was getting congested and his eyes were getting glassy, and he needed to get home and vent his frustrations off on a piece of paper, even if it just ended up looking like a big glob of dark charcoals mashing together to make an abstract void.

 

 

His plan didn't go off exactly with a hitch. The need to find some kind of work was eating him. It infuriated Steve that Bucky could calmly argue his way into being the breadwinner. He got why. He knew Bucky worried, hell Steve worried about himself, but he was a man, and men provided, and men helped out, and men didn't slouch around in their grimy houses when stuff got tough. They tried everything. That's how Steve ended up right in front of Leow Pitkins.

It wasn't like what the new-agey people thought theaters were, singular rooms with a big screen and a light coming from the back to project something unbelievable. This was one of the classical theaters, the ones with the great, grand room, embellished with complicated carvings, whittled into all the support platforms used to seat the people dressed all fancy. The performances were live and fantastical from what Steve had seen of them, but the films of the 1920s he, his pal, and his ma went to see were so new and relevant in such a differently intriguing way.

He remembered when his matook him and Bucky to see a picture her in the twenties. Ma said that it was a special flick too. She heard from a friend who worked in the industry how everyone was ranting and raving about the fact that it was a 'talkie'. At the time, little ten-year-old Stevie had no idea what he was in for. His manever bothered with taking him to the films before. They were always flashing the words too fast for him to get, and it was simply too straining on his eyes.

Now, they had voices and music and... weird fellas with dark skin but light lips? The place was getting crowded, but Steve was short and he could see through some people's legs to a poster that previewed the movie on the left side of the arch hugging the ticket box everyone was shoving themselves towards. He hadn’t been sure if his masaw it or not, but there was no time to tell her when she was grabbing his and Bucky's arms and rushing them into the building to save them from the crowd once she had purchased the tickets, because next thing he knew, he was being dragged, walked into another room where the picture would be shown.

His ma came out from watching _The Jazz Singer_ half-way through, seething with the frisson of anger. She never gave them the specifics of what made her so mad, only told them that those men were mean, dressing up like that and mocking those parties less fortunate, and she told them never to make fun of someone who had skin like that, true skin like that because it was simply unfair and cruel.

Both boys stuck to that promise until Stevie caught Bucky throwing some verbal punches at Richy a while ago with a few other jerks. He ran home and told his ma that he wouldn't talk to Bucky ever again, trying to hide his teary eyes, but his masimply tutted him and suggested maybe giving his friend some time to think about what he said to poor Richy, then Steve could talk to him again, "A little lesson on who really matters to him and where he should place his faith," his ma explained.

That was a time when Bucky still hung out with punks like that, now it was all work and no play, literally. Before, when he didn't have to go to work to eat, he was always out with somebody. It would be Steve most of the time, but for some unknown reason, he still got caught up with all his little dippy friends. It wasn't exactly jealousy that drove Steve to dislike them, the fact that Bucky had other friends, even if Bucky was his only friend and it hurt to not see him making the right choices.

He grew out of it for the most part over time, but way back when, he followed other boys around like he was top-dog when he was really just following their tails, and Steve had to endure the biting of his own tongue when he saw all that Bucky did just to fit in a little. Another thing he ruefully had to endure was Bucky's ill-explained notions of dismissing the idea that the exclusion had nothing to do with his association with Steve, Steve with the twig-legs and slow sloppy feet that made him more than equipped to fall over with the blow of the wind, coincidently leaving him to be the bummer of the party.

But time passed, and Bucky became his own person, built up a reputation not stilted by gaining popularity from following along with the bad outwardly bad kids and instead being the good-looking one that all the ginchy girls fell for and all the cool guys wanted to hang out with. He was sporty and had a charming smile and was basically everything Steve was not. It didn't make sense why someone like him would take interest in someone like Steve.

It made more sense that it all kind of fell into place, and that Bucky became friends with him when he was still in the trailing faze, playing with his friends in Hell's Kitchen one day when a little boy, unbeknownst to Bucky actually older than him, came waltzing across the street with his hands stuffed in his big pockets and his chin trying to crawl into his chest, when Bucky yelled at all the guys he was all too chatty and gleeful with only minutes prior when they started calling Steve some not so nice names. _Lightweight. Scrub. Twit. Grease ball. Wet smack._ Steve never noticed him before, but he eventually worked out the kind of susceptibility his friend held, which fished out a buzzing question. No matter how many times Steve would ask Bucky why he stuck up for him when he never did for anyone else at that point and time, Bucky just found a way of changing the subject.

Leow Pitkins' exterior didn't live up to what was inside, but it still found a way to stick out like a sore thumb. Steve walked in and turned into a narrow hallway, partially hidden to sustain the ultimate pleasing beauty and symmetry of the building as a whole. He opened the door at the end of the hall and saw the receptionist chatting heartedly on the phone with someone. Echoing the brief smile Steve sent her way, she nudged her head in the direction of the closed door on the right, mouthing a 'go ahead' at him.

The exchange went down too quickly to comprehend. Steve's boss was rolling through paperwork like a machine as he smoothly listened to his employee's suggestions for more work, asking if Johnny may need more time off because of the new baby, winding through all the possibilities of extra pay as they appeared in his nervous brain.

His boss was marginally a good guy. His classic Hollywood vibe was obtained with a pencil mustache, slick back hair with a little too much pomade, and a Trilby hat to hide the light hair loss at the front of his head. On a platform level, from what Steve had picked up on about him, he was hard-working and eccentric, and he was always willing to invite another fellow to his office or the proscenium box for a cigar. A surprising, and duly appreciated things to notice about the man was how he also wasn’t biased or prejudiced with Steve being the way Steve is, but that sometimes bit the latter in the ass when Shultz, his unpredictable but predictable boss would constantly offer the blonde a cig or just puff one out right in front of him. Steve had to maintain tiny inhales and exhales almost any time he was even in the vicinity of Shultz.

Unfortunately, Johnny was in just as big of a rut at Steve, actually coming to Shultz a little before Steve had to ask for more hours as well, but the boss declined so it wasn’t much of a shock when Steve left with no added hours to his paycheck as well.

He went home and went to sleep--a tactic he had learned to do to eliminate the span of time in which he could get hungry--before getting up at some hour in the late night to attempt to formulate a nice picture on some paper, the one from earlier discarded under bundles of others, maybe some other time. He hadn’t an idea of what to make, so he just stuck the pencil to the parchment, over the distinct wooden table with a little too much texture to remain hidden from the drawing, and he started swooping from one direction to another.

The curve of a slim arm was being drafted, tapering off into a large but predominantly feminine hand, lacing together within the fingers of a miniature copy of her own, yet bonier. The flank of the grown woman shown was lightened up considerably, to the point that her face was obscured within the halo of luminescence, in reality, simply the blur and of tapered ends of the charcoals path. The little boy was also obscured, but with darkness, a swirl of ominous and unfitting clouds. Only their hands entwined together lovingly was the indicator of the vague maternal bond that still lingered between their juxtaposed souls and forcefully-estranged presence from one another.

He took a look at it and placed it face down on the table.

The niggling pedant within him was gnawing at his bones for not really doing anything, in particular, that day eventful. Sadly, it wouldn’t go away, the lasting obstacle jabbing him in the back every time he tried to forget about it for a fleeting second.

He pulled a book from under the couch and sat back down on the now crooked furniture, ignoring the alteration as he tried to get entranced in the literature. It was like he was staring at gibberish. Logically he was aware that he could understand almost every word within, yet he lied there, boring into the same page for almost ten minutes, feeling outrageously inferior to it, like he thought it was striving and succeeding in making him feel like the most ignorant and incapable guy in all of Brooklyn. He waited for another five minutes before giving up, throwing it across the room and wincing at the scuff it made in the wall.

He would dramatically fall back on the cushions with a huff if it wasn't a danger to his back meeting stiff, stiff stuffing. Then his stomach started growling, because what an opportune time this would be, and he had to groan into the nook of the couch to suppress the urge to gobble down everything in sight. More sleep seemed to be the only option to stave off that nagging pestilent even further.

 

 

With a new day arose a new perspective. Sure, Bucky hadn’t visited, but the guy could get along on his own, the days were freezing and the nights even more so, bathed in the moons light instead of the sun’s radiance directly, and that unwavering and constant air in the house had him yearning for his mother and shoving off the insistent need to hide in the corner of the kitchen, but when a plush, to him at least, amount of cash was offered to him, on the spot, the bells started ringing and the sublime harmony of a choir fired up on queue.

It looked like Johnny needed a little time after all, which in truth wasn’t something to be happy about when the man had a family to look out for now, but his shameful excitement couldn’t help but peek out when he visited Pitkins the next day partly to see if any new productions were in the works but also out of pure aimless desire to do something with those drawn-out days, and the secretary told him the news that his boss scheduled him for some janitorial work that day since Johnny jumped out at the last second for personal reasons. Schultz was going to send a messenger, but he didn’t have to anymore.

So Steve stayed there until his shift came along, and by the end of the day, he got a whole dollar. Of course, the stroke of luck didn’t abolish all pessimism from his brain, but it got him one step closer to helping Bucky with the bill. Looks like things were turning around. Maybe, he could even say it was all going to work out fine.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jessie Owens was a dope African-American Olympic contestant at the 1936 Berlin, Germany Olympics (That's right... racist Nazi-Germany). He won a gold medal in some sort of running category I can't remember, but another was the big slap in the face to Hitler, which came in the form of Germany's supposed 'Superman' Luz Long and fellow competitor of Jessie's actually being friendly to Owen's and giving him advise. They both praised each other in overt sportsmanship, much to the distaste from Hitler. Unfortunetly, he didn't get much praise from his country when he got back home though, in natural segregated ways... >:[  
> This is coming from memory alone, so if I have something wrong, point me out. 
> 
> 'The lady who flew the plane' is not Amelia Earheart, who actually endeavored in her journey only one year later, but it is Aviator Beryl Markham  
> Aviator Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West during September of that year.
> 
> Good ol' Mr. Trunch is derived from sweet and lovely Ms. Trunchbull from from my favorite movie, Matilda, so if you know who i'm talking about, think of her while you read. ;)
> 
> Asthma cigarettes were these counterproductive cigarettes that held herbs instead of nicotine to help asthmatics, dilating the throat to temporarily relieve the patient of their symptoms, while in turn causing dilated pupils, a rapid heart rate, nausea, confusion, dry mouth and hallucinations... thank technology for those inhalers of yours.
> 
> Funny, I wasn't sure wether to add dumpsters into the kicking scene with Steve because I wasn't sure if they were invented yet, so I looked it up, and realized they were actually created THAT YEAR. In the end though, I felt they were way too new to litter the back alleys of Brooklyn.
> 
> The 'talkie' is actually a term people used back in the roaring twenties when everything was all happy-go-lucky before the storm. It was the first movie with sound, too bad hollywood was too currpt to make this accomplishment something worth remembering. The first talkie was called 'The Jazz Singer' and held a predominately white male cast that had their faces painted obscenly black expect for the slim area around and on their lips. This was a style of the 'minstrels', basically the old-aged version of blackface in the entertainment industry. I was used a lot of the times in a sort of mocking sense, nothing near how dear innocent and precious Rudy from the The Book Thief did it as a tribute to his idol, ironically Jessie Owens, not realizing how bad of an idea it would be. Even black actors of the era did it. They were usually doing it because it was the only opportunity they had of making it big, or as to make fun of it by participating, looking out to all black viewers as if to laugh with them saying 'You see this! Ain't it ridiculous' (sardonic or rueful). A lot of big names did it, A LOT. Judy Garland for starters who obviously deserves to have Todo taken away from her. :( Anyway, it's extremly complex and interesting to learn about so I definetly recomend to further into it.
> 
> Finally, if you hear me impliment the derogatory term 'light weight' in here anymore, try to ignore what you think of today when that name is brought up, because it didn't mean someone who got enebriated easily, instead being a crass way of saying a person serves no purpose in life as a whole, not doing anything important or housing a job, stuff like that.


	4. An Error of The Balm Gilead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit heavy, though not as heavy as it will get... sorry.  
> *WARNINGS for discrimination towards a character with a lisp, homophobic slurs, underage sex, prostitution, religious introspection, and tEnSiON gALorE.*  
> ___Please heed, not for me, but yourself <3___  
> -Lili <3

 

_Before January 11, 1937: Monday_

 

Nothing was certainly “alright”. Everything was scattered and confusing and not what Bucky wanted it to be, in his mind, at least. The way that his life was constantly shifting before his eyes was bewildering and strange. It wasn't the kind of forlorn and dull sizzling nerve that happened when Sarah died, though; instead, it was right there, apparent, chronic.

It wasn't systematic or predictable either, like the slow sway of the season as it drudged on without a care in the world for the things it would affect.

No, he was constantly thinking of how this could affect _everything_ , but he wasn't even sure what it was.

All the certain, constant variables in his life were the only thing keeping him semi-grounded, the fact that Darius and him were growing farther apart as the weeks went by, and it was all due to his own existential dilemma, how Steve and him would probably be the same way if it wasn't for Bucky's strong will to keep his friend warm, well-rested, and fed as he went through his annual winter series of illnesses, how he was spending more time with a freaking guy prostitute instead of his loyal companions of amity, those he built up to over the years only to be shadowed by Peter.

What was wrong with him?

Neither Darius nor Steve seemed to really notice though, if that was anything to come out of this befuddling sequence of events that wasn't just waiting to blow up in his face. Part of him was convinced it had to do with his smooth clandestine skills of stealthiness, yet he knew if Steve wanted to find something out, he was going to find a way to investigate, but he was getting worse, and that distorted his straight and narrow persistence for the time being, as far as a sixteen-year-old, undertoned high school dropout like Bucky could tell. He still went to school, albeit scantly, and he would often completely blank out on what the teacher had to say.

Grades could go down considerably fast when ones were being yanked out on almost every odd day in the calendar, at least that's how he liked to sum up his attendance record, but then again, so many other's were going through the same thing. Bucky remembered a lot of the boys being a little sweet on a girl named Sondra.

She had these lush blond curls that sat on the shoulders of her pretty, colorful dresses so confidently and extreme brown eyes. When it was time for their eighth grade year, he stopped seeing her around. He asked her school friends, just out of pure curiosity of an obligatory child in school, and he found out she was taken out because her eldest sister had just birthed a third child and was moving out with her husband, so now their mom needed the second oldest to watch over the other four.

More stories like that starting popping up everywhere, and soon enough, he was fidgeting at the thought he'd be ripped out of his shoebox classroom at any minute by the cruel Kalrem or Manchester.

That was about around the same time he began to really invest in his schooling while he still had it, checking out all the books he could and investing all his free time into bringing Stevie along to the library to check out the history, science, math, and English books instead of just running to the fiction section, not to say that he didn't peruse those rows as well… frequently. He even brushed up on some different languages, though he wasn't fluent in anything other than English for the time being.

His timing really couldn't've been more perfect. The next year, he just got busier and busier, and sure, not everything he crammed in that one fateful school year stuck, but he was set to understand basis of all he wanted to know, which was a lot.

This extracurricular indulgence also reaped other benefits, one of which including understanding the techniques in which crooked men liked to work and the basics of the economy and banks, that one he actually picked up only after Sarah's death. Both helped work out what Alistair Hollister of Saint Charles Bank liked to underplay in his little lectures of financial stability, yet with all that in mind, it never was a great help when it came to actually gaining money for the bills.

Bucky had to work that out on his own, sadly, but he made it work. They had come so close to it all being taken away in October. Bucky genuinely thought all the hard work would amount to nothing, but he scraped by. Just the thought of how it could've possibly ended up falling apart made Bucky quiver with the drum of chance or fate. Steve even caught a few hours at the theater and pitched in on the additional- _additional_ -interest.

Bucky was so flabbergasted when he had finally decided to start seeing Steve again, once the bruises from Gilly's fists faded to regular pale skin again. He seemed relatively fine. He hadn't gotten any skinnier, if that was even possible, and he seemed even more chipper than the last time Bucky had seen him. It was refreshing and relieving and confusing all the same.

Tiny foods swam in his hand and poured in Steve’s lap as a silent apology, and Steve walked his tongue in the waltz of general catch-up like ever-welcoming hostess who simultaneously sprouted in comfortableness that only came from years of knowing.

He was glad to know that his friend could take care of himself, really, especially taken into account the fact that he was an adult, and that was the norm that was expected with adulthood, but it took this crack in their cohabitable tendencies to make him clearly aware of it, not the series of times prior that Steve had ranted and harangued him for his unintentional patronization. What Bucky really didn't expect either, was this new sting in the back of his mind that came with the revelation like a backseat driver’s pedence.

At first. Bucky hadn't an idea what it was. He bit his nails over it and sat alone in the dining halls considering all the outcomes, diluting every step, way, or sign that his friend had shown that he was more than capable.

Bucky never thought Steve was weak. That was never the case. It was just this incessant and persistent need to take care of him, or simply be in his presence.

Or perhaps to be wanted.

That had to be it; Bucky was mopey that his friend could do things for himself in most cases, and it bugged him like a tiny mosquito tapping along the vertebrae of a summer-kissed and bare, sweaty back in the hot of the sun’s blond hair, not because he wanted to have some sort of hegonomic complex domineering over Steve like an insistent tic, or so he could feel power or derive delectation from the fact that someone had to rely completely and utterly on him, which was frankly kind of scary.

It screwed with his head because it gave him a quick flash of realization, realization that he could leave right then forever, and Steve would be fine, the only friend that he really cared about in the respects of everything. He’d go on with his life, not even pausing for a single doubt while if it were Bucky in his shoes, the latter’d probably be a blubbering mess by the end of the week.

None of that was to say that Steve didn’t need someone right now. Emotionally, he seemed to be holding up alright, though sometimes it was pointless to try and read whatever was going on within his stubborn head, giving up when Bucky knew if he pushed any further that little vein in Steve’s pale forehead would burst, and he’d go on a gigantic tirade about how Bucky was babying him.

That was the last thing on Bucky’s mind though. It was winter, thus cold, thus Stevie’s immutable propensity for a seasonal enemy, thus leaving his best comrade to care for him while still ferociously trying to juggle the stress of all his tasks and still get to his friends side in time to give him some medicine when he woke up and place a damp rag on his moist head.

It hadn’t gotten to the degree it had the year prior, at least for now. They really thought he wasn’t going to make it then. There had been multiple occasions where that thought had been passed around nervously, a blanket of denial always stomping out the possible spread of the fire before it caught onto too many things, but last winter was a nightmares dressed in the dazzling glisten on freshly fallen snow.

Steve had been constantly shivering under the protection of too many blankets, and he had got too hot while sitting out on the porch with nothing but some airy boxer shorts. Sarah’s instructions had been clear enough when when wrote them and explained them before going off to work, but then they were simply blobs of words and all he could do was futilely ward off the nearing tipping point.

Sarah had come home to Bucky crying over Steve’s bed because he thought it was over, all the memories and shared troubles swooped up by an imminent journey to dark part of the world where no one knows what wanders.

So, yes, it wasn't as bad as it was that god awful last Winter, but the mere fact that it was treading on that precipice scared Bucky into a frenzy of anxiety and chopped up focus. That was when Steve started to get better, what are the odds, and he started coughing less, and he said his asthma wasn’t acting out as much, but Steve always liked to downplay his shortcomings.

Despite that nagging suspicion, he knew for a fact that Steve would never be able to play off all his other prior symptoms, so he was at least assuaging Bucky with partial truth as far as his friend knew.

Bucky had thought for a fleeting hopeful moment that with the annual bout of malaise being expelled, the same would go for some of the money troubles. Could he be more wrong? If anything, the problems with keeping the house and their stomachs satisfied grew even harder.

It hadn’t hit the point where they knew something had to change yet, he hoped, but what would they change anyway? There really wasn’t anything they could do. It was as if they were in a cage with life, and there was no filter, protecting the feeble humans from some of the harsher things that came with their existence.

Bucky hated the fact that he had more to work with than Steve, not anatomically speaking, but in the way of natural fortification. Grateful didn’t describe how he felt everyday to wake up in a bed in a heated house with mostly promised food, how he could go to his job where he never seemed to be doubted.

Steve, on the other hand, and Sarah for that fact, both had to work so hard to get to where they were. Bucky even had a couple of close friends, though one of those friends started feeling like a stranger as time passed more and more now.

Darius was restricted, just like the rest of the orphans. He had a job and he had chores, but still he found a way to hang out with Bucky, well he used to. Whenever they talked now, it was short, terse, to the point and nothing more, but Bucky wanted more. Want was such a greedy thing to obtain, and Bucky knew it, yet he was selfishly wishing he could understand why his second closest companion was ignoring him all the sudden. He may have been being paranoid, but it didn’t dissuade the factual reality of that long, expanding, obnoxious fissure splitting the two up because of some unknown entity.

He had half the mind to just go up to his old friend and ask what the hell his problem was, but he couldn’t focus on it much as is. He was getting too many so called friends, and it was of the many contributing to this gargantuan crisis evolving in his mind.

Why he went back to that red district the next time he was summoned to work was really a mystery, but if Bucky was absolutely forced to confront his deepest and complex thoughts, he's had to admit that the young man was intriguing for lack of a better term.

He was sure of himself in a way Bucky envied. Yes, Bucky himself wasn't really one for bashfulness and he always had this innate way of drawing attention, but Peter's power over his extrovertedness was honed in such a different way. It was admirable to say the least.

They usually just talked all the way up until Bucky's break expired, about innocuous tidbits of each other’s lives. Peter would explain the way life worked with how he lived, how he had to be on high alert almost all the time because of all the people out there who thought what he did, the people he was intimate with, was all wrong, so crooked in the orthodox order of society.

He talked about how he still missed some of the ways of his old life. He said he missed that assured mind set of knowing you'd have a bed to sleep on at the end of the day and a loving mother to wake up to who would feed you sublime breakfast in the morning. He never talked about his father much, something Bucky wasn't really bothered by. The man sounded like the worst of the worst, and that was saying something with the people Bucky has come into contact with.

Their conversations always found a way to naturally veer to more deep topics, topics that Bucky really never liked to bring out into the light of day. They talked about the fears of what could happen any day now since the nations was practically falling down a rabbit hole of unbalanced, unchecked, and corrupt reforms. They talked about all the things that everyone was too afraid to bring up, because they knew that it would bring them too deeply into reality to step back from and recover. Bucky acquiesced shamefully, a few times, that realization that he had never told Steve any of this before and that he was telling some of the things that kept him up at night to a borderline stranger who he chatted to secretly in the shadows of the shady streets near the docks.

Peter could've written a book about Steve with everything Bucky told him. It just was always so automatic and instinctive to rant about tiny framed Stevie with the heart of gold and a dedicated and earnest storage of rage to keep him righteous in all the right ways. Everything Bucky went on about somehow always ended up relating or lapping into something about his best friend, but could they really be considered friends when Bucky involuntarily had kept all these dejected and surreal thoughts from him?

What would the other do under the realization that his friend fraternized with the likes of a male prostitute who constantly advertised the benefits of the risqué job to Bucky. Would he be further enraged by the notion that Bucky had considered it, actually, full-heartedly divulged into the imagination of what it could entail for their future in the ways of money?

They needed money. They needed it miserably, and they couldn't hide under that thin veil of optimism for much longer before Steve was objectively shoved out onto the street and forced to do something like that himself. The thought alone made Bucky feel repulsed by his incompetence. Here we was, whining like a baby when he looked at the unconventional aspect for making some lettuce to keep them going. If Steve could walk into his mind, he'd be repulsed by the repugnant swirl.

It wasn't only the shunned practice that made him itch to hide, but the associations he'd make. It was all too apparent how few women came to these places for some pleasure. Bucky knew what he would have to do. It was painstakingly obvious in fact. He wasn't like that though. He couldn't be. People like that weren't right in head. He read it in a pamphlet actually; scientifically proven.

He told Peter this before on a stressful day and immediately felt bad, but the other took it in stride. He said that he understood where Bucky was at that moment. "I can read it on ya Bucky…it may take a while for you to understand it though." Then he had just stood there with this conceded grin that knew something that it wasn't going to tell anyone else just to watch it unravel in a way more ragged way.

And that was all he would say. It confused the hell out of Bucky. What could that mean? He actually did start considering the question of whether people like Peter were _really_ not right in the head.

All of it was such a jumble of two-sided opinions and biased intrusions. Thinking straight wasn't of highest operative settings at that moment. He couldn't gear it like that either.

And Peter, being the provocative and insistent pedant he was, never made it much better with he frequent and blatant advances on Bucky. He could handle a little suggestive tongue from a lady or two, but hearing it from a  guy was a whole new level of unknown and unventured quandaries.

Still, through the perverse nature of their relationship, Bucky stayed and listened and let Peter listen in return like they're the chummiest. Peter said it was because they were so much alike, and that alone had spooked Bucky out enough to stop talking to him for at least a week.

Something strange was happening, and Bucky was not sure in any sense of the word how to cope with it. There was now this hollowed cave in his stomach that demanded immediate attention whenever even near Steve. It had always been their, Bucky had worked out eventually, but under a much more tame status. That cave now, however, was trying to swallow everything in it’s path. It consumed him like a rapid spread of a fire in a wooden cabin.

Steve’s words were instantaneously sucked into this void of mystery and somehow stored their. They would come out to haunt him in the middle of the night when he missed Steve, but they clashed gruesomely with his rational thoughts.

There were nights now, though, that’d leave him shaking in his bed, dreams that involve Peter, in a blur, but distinguished by fiery red hair. There's chaste touches and bare skin and Bucky splayed out on his back while Peter melted over him, just like how he said he did it for all the girls that paid him, but Bucky had to wretch himself out of the confusing and demoralizing ordeal before he threw up, then just hunched on his bed, rocking back in forth in a land of refutation and nausea.

But, truly and in it barest form, the dreams, no nightmares, that make him feel stiff in the morning because he refuses to touch himself in the prospect of relief throughout the whole night, the visions the made him shove his face in his pillow to stave of the burning in his eyes, were the ones with the blond hair hovering over him with a face so fond and affectionate and loving and so inaccurate with to how it would look like in reaction of actuality; disgust.

He could barely fathom the idea of looking Steve in the eyes everyday, too afraid he'd see it and maybe call his friend out on it when Bucky pitifully didn’t even really know what _it_ was himself. He was batting into the dark oblivion, and his terribly unreliable senses weren’t doing anything to help, going haywire in their tenements.

In other news of late, and rightfully the only spurt of good-fortune Bucky felt fell upon him that already grueling year of ‘37, some important people with important suitcases and important postures that proposed important attention came to Abraham Orphanage and demanded to speak with Manchester. Kalrem had blubbered through another fourth of her welcome before she comprehended their interuptional request. It would’ve been rude to Bucky if it wasn’t so enjoyable to see her crinkly eyes crumble in the deflation of dominance in this altering greeting.

She had led them upstairs as everyone who witnessed the initial ordeal followed the mistress and her guests until they were completely out of sight, turning into a tight corner at the top of the stairs. A symphony of whispers cascaded through the first floor in throngs of questions and theories as Rollins tried half-heartedly to shut them up as he too looked up those rounded stairs, gaze just as searching or more so than Bucky’s or all the other boys.

A sizzling feeling in Bucky’s gut was listening to all the absurd things that the other boys around him were saying. “I bet they’re gonna shut ‘em down,” Percy said beside Bucky and the latter had no room between where he was biting his cheeks even to give a fake affirmative nod.

“Yeah,” Jonathan pitched in on the other side of Bucky. “Bet we’re gonna be shoved into the system and sold off to be farm boys outta the city or maybe to some city folk who’ere lookin’ for some extra hands.”

Bucky looked at him with a frown etched between his brows and in the deepened corners of his mouth. “How d’you know that?”

“S’already happened to me before. Went to some farm a while back. They gave me some good whacks with them horse whips when I was bad, but I had better food than I can say for this shithole. Then the dust started rollin’ in  and they couldn’t afford me anymore and my work was useless, so they sent me back to the city services.”

Bucky was stunned into silence and he has to digest that before the regret settled in at the retrospect of his snappy question. He was about to apologize though when Manchester could be heard from upstairs angrily yelling fortissimo and muffled words in his office, the office where the important people went under Kalrem’s guide.

Everyone turned their faces back the banister and wait with heavy hearts, the kids for the possibly dissolving anchor that keeps them under a roof and Rollins and now Eugene, who had emerged from his office out of curiosity, both with trepidation in their stature at the implication of a job lost in times like ‘37. Bucky made a rueful attempt at humor--the fact that they all know how bad this place is that they can only guess one reason some fancy dressed people would visit.

Eternities passed like they’re stuck in molasses, and Manchester didn’t recede from his thunderous yet muffled crusade for the rest of the meeting. Bucky heard Kalrem’s tentative voice trying to chime in a few time before immediately being flooded out by her boss’s over and over again.

The longevity of it was a cruel joke towards Bucky's anxiety. This would be quintessentially the most inept time for something like this to happen. How ironic. He had always dreamed of the day someone would call the orphanage for it's piss poor job, but now the home was the suddenly the only thing separating him from the winter.

It was the only place he got at least livable rations of food. It was the place where he had a bed, and he was about to get thrown right out on the front step or shoved into a home even worse. It made Bucky want to run up to the room and say it was the best place he had ever been in.

He was almost considering doing just that when the door shot open upstairs, and Manchester's prominent scowl appeared . He backed up and yelled curse words of all varieties at the important people as they walked out of the door. They seemed unfazed though by this piercing howl that oinked from the devil himself, race beat red, as though they were deaf to his haranguing. Bucky saw this and wished for such composure. It would probably come with adulthood.

Both man and woman walked down one of the two sets of stairs, deliberately or not, closest to the clump of kids would had originally been sat in the dining hall. The woman looked their way as the duo went out the front door, giving a brisk smile before walking out that sent Bucky through a whirlwind. Who smiles as they take a bunch of kids out of a home?

Everything with Manchester seemed normal, going along with the guidelines for his normal behavior that was presumed to ensue on a quotidian cycle, the cycle anyone who was as mad as he was would throw out the window in his position. Kalrem was the same way, yet if it was possible, her attitude was ineptly devoid of any kindness or apathetic act of said consideration like the kind she had to front on the odd ends of her punishments if she still didn't want to be arrested for child neglect and abuse.

Bucky went into her office later that day, asking for an extra food ticket, secretly for Steve, and she screamed to the high heavens of how ungrateful and reproachfully invalid he was. She actually got out the first half of a sentence to the dooms of chores when she quickly zipped her lips up quicker than fly looking not to be swat by a roll of monochrome newspaper. Then she shunned him out of her office and slammed the door behind him just like she had done the fateful night he lost track of time on a walk home.

The ordeal didn't make much sense until finally the one and only pseudo swine headmaster himself arrived at dinner and situated himself at the opening of the room, straightening his tie and such. Bucky actually found some way to get Darius' attention that night and had been sitting beside his heartedly discussing all the ways everything would change once everyone was taken out of the house. Bucky heard a slight apologetic lilt in his voice as he agreed to Bucky's brought observation of his distance as of late, yet didn't say anything else on the matter.

Manchester all the while had been speaking in hushed tongue with all the staff, yet soon after turned to the kids as a whole before raking a painful sounding grunt through his throat to clear it of his earlier rant. "I am here to inform you--" Bucky heard like his ears were stuffed with cotton, "--that as of today, I am to make a reform to our system."

Bucky is caught up in a trip of confusion and so are all the other boys by their sudden rush of whispers leak into the air. "Not that any of you deserve to be aware of the details of what happened earlier today, rest assured that we won't be getting shut down. I- _we_ the staff have been confronted with our rigidity to you young mens' freedom. Apparently, we are to make a change in our rules for outdoors time. I am… er, happy to announce to you that you will be allowed a much more larger scope for field hours." Bucky's heart leaped at this, and the only thing immediately jumping to the front of his mind was Steve and, strangely enough, Peter.

"It is now that if you have to finish a set list of chores, now to be shortened as well--" he adds in a grumble. "--then you are welcome to go wherever you please, with of course restrictions to the city borders and hindered as well by your jobs which you _will not dismiss_ as a variable if you still want to be fed and bathed."

That was all he could get out before all the boys were cheering and screaming over his flaccid attempt at a conclusion as he walked away with a flare to his nose. Bucky got up and so did Darius and they hugged like they had not been separated by an unknown schism, but he still pulled away awkwardly quick, like he'd been doing it sub-consciously and was now thinking clearer. Bucky tried not to let the analyzation run deeper in his brain than it needed to.

This awkward tension was overbearing yet Bucky couldn't allow it to abuse him and distract him from such new freedom. It felt like a spurt of rash energy, something he wanted to take to his advantage as soon as he could. He spent an entire night out on the dance hall with a few other guys from the orphanage, hollering in the name of those important people.

They found their own gals and they swoonded them until they were fits of giggles and rosey cheeks and they all skidded their feet with the music as they swirled the girls around. It was hearty and light and free.

That free feeling lasted for days, doing the same thing, again and again, yet no one told him this much levity could sometimes be boring when you're doing the same thing repeatedly.

So it got old pretty quick, and Bucky couldn't help but feel guilty for wasting all of the independence on superficial things like dancing with girls day after day, or even complaining about that. It was double jeopardy, but when it still came down to it and he got to the point that he was outside and ready to endeavor into an adventure through the city since he'd done all he was told, he was still being sat on by this heavy apathetic weight. The part that did care was still caught up are more important things like Stevie.

He kept on going though, because it was the only thing that he could look at and think of happiness, intentional insipid disentangling from the strings that tied him to the sights right outside like the streetwalker asking for money right beside the front door or the man walking around in ragged cloth across the street, drinking liquor from a confident glass bottle with disinterested attention to his surrounding, skittering discursively onto scarily wavering ground.

So he kept going at least he tried. He tried to have fun with boys who he barely knew by first name, and he so strongly did he try to converse. Their obnoxious hairdos and even more bravado filled exclamations at all the the pretty girls that passed.

As for the good ones, boys with an ingot of hidden gold in their heart, well they were walking along with the invisible chain that wrapped them around the fingers of those who naturally had a way with life already figured out. What they did from that point would be decided by them or for them. Bucky knew just enough to realize at that time, when he had been following around the suave put together guys that those weren't their only attributes, not late enough to reveal that he indeed had become one of them.

But let them do what they think they should do, Bucky thought, and so he let that strategy simmer and become a hard tempered mission when they hollered right in girls' ears and knocked over more than enough people to cause concern when they had their little intervals of wrestling matches on the flooded floor of waltzing feet doing the Lindy Hop or they spat every time they talked, stupidly forgetting of the grotesque bubbling of saliva and beer on their tongues and laughing because of it, letting the rest pour out.

It was irksome, and Bucky had a limit to what he would and would not do to irksome pricks. That line was thoroughly crossed by the time Timmy Schumer shoved Alice May's puffy dress skirt up as high as he could before shoving his head in to deviously see what was under as the lady was occupied in tongues with another faceless guy. It was the irk that drove Bucky right to latching onto his legs and pulling with all the might he could evolve. That damn irk caused Timmy to slip from the beer on the floor on his hands he'd been leaning on to get the best view and crash down face first on the floor beneath him.

Unfortunately Timmy wouldn’t've understood the whole 'irk' dilemma, so when he recovered, he whipped right around and tried to punch Bucky square in the face only for the latter or easily deflect the swing with how inebriated the aim was.

He recovered quickly and spewed vulgar words in Bucky's face before asking, "And what gives'th you the right to grab me like that, ya fag!"

"The right? You mean the right like the kind you had to yanked her dress, Tim, or are we talking about some different kinda right?"

Timmy scowled, and Bucky continued, closing in on him. "If you really thought about it with that one ounce brain of yours, you woulda realized by now that the only reason that blood is pooling outta your nose at the moment is 'cause of your own doin's."

"Oh, wow, look at that, those big phrathings'th and that. Your fairy, Thtevie, teach you to talk all pretty n' all?"

"Hey, you keep him outta this. And he ain't no fairy!" Bucky tried especially hard not to pummel his face, one of the only things still preventing him was all of Timmy's friends closely circling in on the two feuding boys like hungry hyenas. Bucky was trying with all might not to look at them, a sign of weakness, a suicidal white flag.

"Awe, alwayth loyal, huh Barnes’th? What happened to that loyalty I had from you? You know while you was thcampering along like a mutt with your tail between your legs'th and following me around like I held the thsecret'th of the univerthe?"

"Sorry, guess I learned you only held the secrets to stupidity."

Someone grabbed Bucky's jacket from behind him and pulled him up until he only could tap the floor with the toes of his feet. Timmy closed in too, Bucky now sandwiched by two people. His confidence was quickly eroded.

The dancing went on around them like nothing ever happened and only Bucky, Tim, and Tim's crew were affected by the circumstance. Hell, Alice May probably never ever noticed Timmy's intrusion by the looks of her lips still locked tight against the faceless guy. He was silently asking anyone to help. He really didn't feel like sporting another new shiner. By this rate, he was going to be more like Steve than Steve. Last month, his friend held the biggest record yet of not culminating more than two bruises throughout December, but Bucky just thought it was his Christmas gift to Bucky.

"Wow, you're full of gas'th tonight. Go ahead tell me another joke, Mr. Moxie. I want ya ta be talkin' while I butht your face in tho I can get a few of thothe pretty teeth knocked around too. What do ya thay, hmm?"

Irresponsibility was a rush to hold onto after never ever getting to wield it for too long before he got a whack from Kalrem or Manchester. It was stupid. Bucky was stupid, but God it felt so good. _Don't do it. Don't do it. But I want to do it._ "Well, _I could_  l-lend a few to you. Maybe it'll fixth that funny lithp of yourth." Bucky probably wouldn't’ve done it to anyone else, at least now that he was older, but it felt amazing to do it to Timmy of all people.

Timmy's face flooded deep purple and his lip quivered in rage as he reeled back, but someone shoved him aside before Bucky could eat his knuckles.

The guy holding Bucky's from behind dropped him in shocked, Bucky tried galiently to recover from the lack of air he had to brave though just to spit out cheesy and discriminatory comeback. "Come on, before his gang realizes we left!" Darius shouted, and he complied wordlessly as they weaved through the crowd and out the door, hearing a scant string of desperate words from the homeless guy by the front door before being across the street and in an alley, catching his breath with Darius.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Bucky could remember him himself frustratingly shouting those same words to Steve in the past. “Bucky!”

“What?”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“Why the hell do you care, Darius?”

A mute moment painted over them, but Bucky wasn’t trying to leech off of Darius’ reaction. He just wanted to know. Besides, he was still recuperating from the unexpected sprint and the strangling combined. He was too busy with the hindrances to even risk a gaze to fall upon his friend.

He came out of nowhere. It was all surreally a pile of inscrutable memory now as it was done and over with. One thing that was sparking enough to be recognizable was the curiosity towards if Darius had seen what was going on, why didn’t he step in earlier, not that Bucky would appreciate that embarrassment. A burning ember if guilt suddenly kindled because for a small tidbit of time, he understood exactly Steve’s anger dismissals for assistance in a fight, such a punch to the pride.

No, Darius had just arrived and smoothly became his savior, nothing else. He didn’t linger and sadistically sequester the view of struggle from Bucky at the hands of Timmy and The Doofuses, though it’d fit with his period-typical monogamous seclusion perfectly.

Finally Darius spat out an answer. “Because you’re my friend, ya idiot.”

“Well, _friend_ , I wasn’t about to let some light weight swine sneak a peek at Alice May’s undercarriage when she didn’t even know what was goin’ on!”

“Come on, Bee. What is she expecting in a dress like that?”

There was an audible scrape of nails to be found when he gripped the brick wall laden to his back to stop him from giving Darius a crooked nose. If he didn’t change the subject right then, he would’ve gotten into the amount of two physically inclined fights in one day. “Yeah, whatever, Darius.”

“No, it isn’t ‘whatever’. What were you thin-”

“How come ya haven’t been even givin’ me the time of day when we’re in the same room?”

Darius gave his famous enigma of a look in return, so Bucky have no choice but to continue. “Really, Dar, what did I do that’s been making you have a stick up your rear whenever it comes to slipping out a single word in my direction.”

“I-- It doesn’t matter.”

Bucky laughed. “Well, it sure as hell matters to me. And i’d really like to know what’s up.”

“Nothin’s up, Bee… I-I was just being a twit.”

“Well you got that right.”

“I’m sorry, i’ll start talking to ya more.”

“Yeah… sure.”

“Really, I swear it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

****

 

So Bucky and Darius were talking again, and the dance hall was particularly a place to avoid if he Bucky didn’t want get his pretty teeth knocked out.

Steve had such a proud smile when Bucky explained to him what happened and Bucky had to hold onto every ounce of restraint in order not to giggle like a maniac under the look that his friend was giving him because it simply filled him with something too bright to understand.

Sometimes he just wanted Steve to stop. What? He really wasn't sure, but it was something that made Bucky’s chest tight and his throat thick. Steve would be smiling and giddy for his friend and Bucky still felt like slamming the door shut, deeply lodging them both apart so Bucky didn’t have to fight off the disgusting urges that his friend only aided to with his voice, so smoothly tranquil and deep or the silly swoop of his bangs he had going on, so effortlessly, shining golden strands of hair flowing like a tame ocean trying to feebly break out of it’s cohesive, molecular bond, though in reality it wanted to stay there, but it knew it had to put up a front.

So many words seemed to fall in perfect alignment for how Bucky felt about Steve’s visual attributes. When it came to his personality though, it was a torture of special kinds, devised by the utter pureness of Steve’s soul, because the things Bucky could say may be able to fill a large novel series, and he hated it. He hated it all so much. And yet, he could never hate Steve.

All the thoughts were so quick to appear, no way to wipe them off the face of the planet before he could visualize like he could sometimes do with the conjurings of Peter. Both situations were sifted through and seeped into every capillary in their own ways. Those ugly, misconstrued fizzles of images were much more forgiving on the behalf of Peter, but they also focused more on his body, the parts Bucky had no true reason for being interested in at all

With Steve, it reviewed every single thing about him, from the callous tips of his toes that Bucky constantly shoved away because of their stink to the very highest of Steve’s many flyaway hairs at the tiptop apex of his head. They were always like that, unruly and untamed, so rebellious. Bucky constantly sat on his hands as he watched his friend draw or read so they wouldn’t rush forward on their own accord to touch that fluff of the heavens.

It in itself really wouldn’t unnerve Steve in the slightest. They were always so affectionate, platonically. But then Bucky would look down and he see those fond eyes staring at him, an ocean. He hated calling Steve’s eyes an ocean. There had to be more to describe blue like Steve had in those eyes besides the patented ‘ocean’ or ‘sky’.

His own eyes would reluctantly travel even farther down to his pointy nose to that strong cupids bow that Bucky would pliantly put his index finger to, dragging down onto his thin upper lip, then to the plusher bottom one. What would Steve think then? Would he be mortified, shove Bucky the floor and punch him until he couldn’t breath through the flood of thick blood angrily rushing all of the affected orifices. Bucky hoped so desperately. Death would be a godsend compared to the hells of this sinner’s playground.

He wasn’t religious, and it was hard to hold faith in something so absent from his life so far, but all the same, how else could put a name to these putrid tantalizations of his own mind. Sin fit it so horrifically in proportion, a beautiful net to wrap around the idea of it all and strangle it into compliance.

_You are a sin now. Thou shall be repented and disdained, and may the bearer be forever in the gardens of corruption for their betrayals to the ways of orthodox life._

Steve wasn’t religious now either, Bucky remembered, looking through that slim ripped seam in the blanket of bad contingencies.

Maybe since he doesn’t do the whole God thing anymore he wouldn’t be that bothered.

But religion doesn’t really stop people from spitting on queers when they simply know the fairies are just not natural.

Because it isn’t natural or beautiful or anything between a man and woman.

There is one way and one way only.

Him and Steve could never-

Steve would turn him in. He’d have him hanged where Steve would watched so pleased with himself and…

Bucky would be saying sorry for what he was thinking and the way he is to Steve until he lost his footing and it all would go peacefully blank and dark.

When did _he_ become so dark?

Maybe if Steve just-

“Bucky, please don’t tell me i’ve been talking to my good ol’ self this whole hour.”

“What? Oh, sorry Stevie.”

“Yeah I bet. How’s the book going?”

“It’s real fine for the fifth time around.”

Steve grimaced. “I don’t care what you say, i’m gonna be gettin’ you new book or two when I get a steady job.”

“You know you don’t have to. I like readin’ ‘em over again. I catch things I didn’t before.”

“Surely it stings you a little that you can’t ever get outta the loop, having to deal with same story over and over again.”

Bucky scoffed hard, pressing his finger’s deep into his eyes, “You got me there, Stevie.”

Steve was so accurate absent-mindedly and it was truly comedic. If only his innocent friend could hear half of the thoughts Bucky had about him.

Bucky really did believe for a tiny sliver of time that he could just convince himself. He knew himself, and he was aware enough to know for absolute certainty that the ladies were his forte, his muses of ecstasy. They had everything that all the other men desired, that Bucky thought- knew he desired, but he now laid on his bed at night or blanked out while delving into the depths of deliberation after just seeing Steve, _Steve._

He remembered looking at girls and women before, the way they walked and the way they talked, their beauty. They were creatures of magnificence. That’s what he always admired about them, their beauty. It was as an uninterested spectator though, he realized, because every girl that he had ever been with, all those times of heated ordeals were now really simply a state of questioning.

All of those times, what did they all have in common, the ones who gave him a quick helping hand? They had pretty blond hair and blue eyes to match-

That thought made him emptier than prior assumptions could ever. Had he really always ended up closing his eyes at that apex of a moment filled with bliss? That wasn’t the only way he could get off, for sure...

_What were you imagining, Buck, huh? What was it?!_

No, absolutely not. It was paranoia. Peter had spawned this puss fill egg in is stomach, and it was infecting him. This was why all the people said they were bad. They were purposefully bombarding the regular folk into a vicious state of panic. They were monsters, abominations.

Bucky could look at a picture Gary Cooper or Tyron Power and innocently admire their looks, because they were good looking guys, shredded down to the simplest of words, but why did it feel different than when he pined after women's’ looks.

Men were filled with sharp edges and broad shoulders and it did something to him that could never precociously evolve out of those visions of women’s breast or their milky hair. This is what he was talking about. Back and forth! Back and forth; utterly annoying, permanently disturbing and the devil in the guise of open-mindedness.

 

 

And enough was enough, he would go down to the red light spot once more. It was to ask the abomination one straight question that would iron out all of the errors in this monopoly of twisted suggestions.

“You said you knew some other… you know people like you?” Bucky asked as he came to halt in front of Peter, obligatorily inhaling a cigarette as he leant on a light post pole.

“Well, hello to you too, my good friend.”

“Peter.”

“Okay, if you mean _prostitutes_ , then yes. I’ve made a lot of friends in this business, believe it or not. And what’s it to you. Where’ve you been?”

“Not of importance.”

“Well, my good buddy, I did miss you, and truly it hurts how you are talkin’ to me right now.” Peter pouted obnoxiously.

“Well, ‘m sorry. You know any girls who’ll take less than a dollar?”

“W-well yeah, a few I guess.”

“Great could they be here tomorrow, around this time?”

Peter sobered up in an instant. “What’re you tryin’ to get at, Bucky.”

“Nothin’, just want some company.”

“Bullshit.”

Bucky swallowed slowly down the jitters that began to rise up again. He tried to suppress them the best he could before he started to talk. “Really? What does that mean?”

“It means I know what you’re doin’ from personal experience, and all’s it’s gonna do is put you in a situation you really don’t want. I was lucky enough to realize I like both sides, but you… Bucky you don’t want to do this to yourself just to prove a point.”

Bucky’s heart was pounding in his ears. “I ain’t trying to prove a point, alright!” He exploded. “I’m just trying to pitch some woo, you know? And nothin’s easier than a gal who gets paid to do it.”

“Bucky--”

“Where the hell do you get off tellin’ me how to run my life, Peter? Last time I checked, I’m not the one sleeping on the streets or a whore house or wherever you coop up at night.” Bucky paced around, ducking his head as he spoke his last few words, regret already bleeding through his voice. Damn Stevie for making him into a softy.

The next time Peter spoke, it was too soft and too careful. “Bucky… I-I see you in me,” he began and Bucky pashawed. “Believe it or not, you and me are a lot more alike than you think.”

“Oh, like hell!”

“Come on-”

“Can you just tell one of your ginchy girl friends that they have an offer, or will I have to do it myself?!”

“Fine.”

Finally, his courage showed, and he looked up at Peter again. Bucky was breathing hard through his nose and Peter was practically slicing his neck with his eyes. “Good.”

“What do you want?”

“W-what d’you mean?”

“Preferences? Tall, short, heavy, dark, light-”

“Alright, a-alright! Uh… dark hair, and maybe tall. I d-don’t know. Um… dark eyes.”

“So it’s settled.”

When Bucky fell back against a lamp pole as well, a yard or two away from Peter, the weariness drizzled through his veins, cooling every artery as he cough in a flaccid attempt to rid the edge of the mean frigidness. “Agreed.”

They both watched vacantly as a few loose papers from that days news flowed across the black street, taking it’s own course, so free to roam, yet instantly stopped by any force worth any significance, free but constrained. New York City’s tumbleweeds.

****

 

Despite Bucky’s anguished wishes for that day to flow like thick sap down the rough hide of summer tree bark, to proceed with the knowledge of his poor verdict for his crime, his sin, the hours passed suspiciously faster. He refused to think about anything relating to it until it happened so he wouldn’t back out like a wimp.

He does everything possible to occupy his mind, throwing rocks over the pear, reading some random pamphlets some random preachers on some random street shove in people's faces. Or he reads the worn paperbacks he has stacked up secretly under his cot in the orphanage. He even writes little stanzas across dirtied and wrinkled parchment when it dissolved to that being the only other option other than thinking about what was going to happen when it came to making sure he didn't die of obligatory boredom or a panicked heart attack at the ripe age of ten and six.

****

_Satin arctic rows of exhausted throws_

_for Apollo, weep in earnest ‘let us go!’_

_for their stratus is in woes_

_their radiant bath glows_

_yet itches for its haven grotto_

****

_Oh, as the measure stretches forth_

_how the polar proves its worth_

_and the bronze medallion rests its mirth-_

****

~~_The lovely woman's dauntation_ ~~

~~_will prove his utter vexation,_ ~~

~~_and he'll fall under those cowardice_ ~~

~~_and will fall to his temptations, powerless-_ ~~

 

When the writing took an unfortunate turn for the worse, his only other option for a distraction was visiting the little rickety house that now only had one person to look out for it. He mindlessly let himself in and found Steve trying his best to make something that resembled potatoes in a big pot of broth. It was the most appetizing thing Bucky had seen in a long time.

At least, it could be if Steve just turned down the gas a bit and let it stop boiling. Bucky wasn't really there enough to tell him such, but after it overflowed onto the dark gray, encircling iron, Steve swore loudly and hitched the notch all the way to the left before backing up.

He turned around and saw Bucky, giving him a pensive look and yanking a kitchen towel from the rack hanging under a cupboard. “You just gonna stand there and let me burn the food I wanted to surprise you with?” Steve asked in a disappointed note.

He didn't actually think Steve had seen him come in, too focused on the soup or whatever you would call it. “Sorry,” he finally sung out, “But really, should I be putting that anywhere near my mouth as is?” It was a transparent kick of fun. Bucky would gulp the whole thing down as promptly as Steve step back from the receding bubbles. It was just about as sublime a smell as something of Sarah's.

Steve though seemed to take it the other way and just went on stirring it with a frown on his face that spoke miles without saying much at all. “Hey, come on Stevie, you know I'm kidding. What's wrong?”

“What makes you think something is wrong?”

“Because I know you, and flinging around bum rap like you're not being tickled by something right now would be pointless,” he spits out, because really doesn't want to talk right now since his stomach may flop out of his mouth like a dying fish of worries and contradictions that he settled there so he wouldn't confront them until he was done with the gal, and then he wouldn't be able to change his mind.

“It's nothing really. I'm just mad I ain't as good at this as my Ma. How am I gonna be able to care for my own body when I can't even make some potato soup. Is potato soup a thing?”

“I'm not really sure, but I am sure that you don't have to worry. I-”

“Don't even start on it, Buck. ’m already riled up, and you going all coddling-mode will make me even more volatile than right now. _Please_.”

“Sorry.”

“It's- it's okay. I just not feeling the greatest today, okay?” The idea of coming over suddenly felt tacky in Bucky's mouth, sticking to the roof with guilt; freaking peanut butter. Steve went on without pause. ”So what's up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

Steve abandoned the pot to lean his two elbows on the counter separating them, shaping his face into fake astonishment. “Am I looking in a mirror? Holy cow!”

“What are y-”

“Barnes, you're as white as the sheet covering the window,” he interrupted plainly, drying up and putting more weight into his stance. He pushed himself closer over the linoleum underneath him. “It isn't serious, is it, Buck? Are you okay?”

The way he could switch banter so easily because he was worried made Bucky's heart flutter, but the clunch of it after he realized his mask was peeling kept his throat stinging.

_If only I could tell you…_

“Yeah, just… I saw a-a bird.”

“A...bird? You're spooked because you saw a bird?”

“Well, I actually saw it fly into a window.” _Where the hell did that come from, Edgar?_

“Oh.”

“It was really gruesome. T-their was blood on the uh- the uh glass and it was lying there figiting-”

“Got it, Buck.” Steve interrupted quickly, hunching his shoulder as he thinned his lips and placated with a swift hand in the air. Steam was rising from the pot and Steve turned back to it. The notch was then placed at a low temperature so the food could simmer without flooding the stove.

Places that would be easily more suitable than such found themselves to be amenable addendums later rather than sooner. Bucky's clammy hand swiped across his forehead, just as slick, and he bit his lip in regret. This was such a stupid idea.

“So how are you going to take her?”

“What!” he asked panicked, looking up at Steve who was visually affronted by his shouting.

“How do you want to take it? I mean you could use a bowl, but I'm pretty sure that they all have some cracks in ‘em, sorry.”

“No-- no, sorry. Yeah, i'll- i'll have some on a plate. I could get it. You- you  don't have to-”

“That bird really is gumming all the work I did,” Steve joked. ”You ain't feelin’ too fresh. Go sit down, and I'll bring it over.”

Bucky silently complied. They began to eat in earnest. The rich heat of the soup was definitely not overshadowed by his earlier mood. It seemed to tame for the time being actually, though the stress was still there because he was constantly trying to balance broth on an only slightly concaved plate.

He failed more than a few time and got it on his pants, honing Steve into an obnoxious laugh, sounding half way between a whining cow and a honk of a horn. It left Bucky laughing at its absurdity. “What the hell was that?!”

“I don't know ya’ oaf,” Steve hiccuped, Bucky covered his mouth to hear his friends reasoning. The plate was discarded onto the lonely table in front of them. “Stop being twit, and maybe you won't have to hear it again.”

“Oh, i’d pay to listen to that the whole day.”

“Yeah, like the most amusing thing in your life is _my_ laugh.”

“Well,” Bucky began hesitantly. It had to be a contender--not much to do, really. He had his reading and the writing, but the most entertaining thing…

He looked around, and the papers underneath the table caught his eyes. He smirked as he looked back up. “No, but it’s a contender.”

“Oh really? For what?”

Bucky reached out for the papers, bunched together in the most sloppy pile possible. “These little guys, I think.”

Steve gave a bashful smirk. When the chuckled lift up, Bucky subsided it the best he could. Steve hated how much he blushed. Finally he reached out for Bucky’s hands. The other’s eyes flickered like lightning between his friends face and those bony pale fingers. He wasn’t looking up, but he still had that smile on. Bucky’s heart was suddenly pounding as it endured the slow motion of excruciating anticipation, but as the hands slope further, the burn was washed out.

He rested his hands on the papers and gave them a tug. Out of reflex, like a possessive last pull of resistance, he gripped them tighter. He didn’t mean to. It was just that for that small paragraph of scene, he thought wonderful exhilarating things, and now that slid down into the crack floorboard, hermits never wanting to be seen again.

And thus, only one molecule was left of it in the drawings which he had yet to look at.

They were the new batch, freshly thrown and baked by Steve’s deft hands. This was the only way in any possible timeline that Bucky could hold his hands, through the paper’s prints.

“Bucky?”

“Hmm?” He shot his head up.

“Give me my paper’s, please.”

“Why?” A cocky grin and frivolous reflections in the eyes, the only thing Bucky was good at pretending.

“Because they’re mine.”’

“Come on, Stevie, I just wanna take a look. You know I love all your drawings”

Invisible fingers of receding composure tickled Steve’s back as he drew his shoulders up. It was so visible as to make Bucky feel the awkward as well. “Yeah, but I just don’t want you to look at _these_ ones.”

“Oh? What is it. Did ya make some naughty little pictures of Luisa or Bett? Oh, then I gotta see.”

“No, Buck that’s not it. Just mind your own business okay?” His face began to match the a scarlet ibis’s coat, but Bucky had to push or else he deflate from the prior disappointment into an oblivion of corroded hopes.

He’d miss his appointment. He’d worry Steve.

He fully pulled the papers from Steve’s cursory grasp and held them up above his own head before he could level parallel eyes with challenging squint.

“Bucky, i’m serious.”

“Well, hi serious. I’d like to take a look at Stevie’s fantastic drawings, and since he isn’t here anymore, I guess I can go ahead.”

“Real mature, Bucky. Are you serious right now?”

“Wait, I thought you were.”

“Bucky!”

“What?! I just wanna look. That’s all.”

“Well, I don’t want you to.”

“Why? You’ve never gotten worked up about me lookin’ at your drawin’s before.”

“Okay, so?”

“Okay, so what's so different about these?”

“Bucky, please.” It got too mellow too quickly. Steve's eyes were just a wine a glass on the edge of the table, wavering in its balance. Bucky's worry eclipsed his jocularity. _Steve was serious,_ he worked out way too late like a clueless imp.

Permeated with a sudden responsibility to make the right choice, Bucky slumped and handed back the papers, all the while sparing his friend the indignity of being trampled down with the fretted gaze of his friend by instead fronting overly pouted lips.

"You're no fun." His voice cracked, but it didn't seem to be picked up by Steve, or, at least, he didn't seem bothered by it. What could've possibly been so important that Steve thought not to show it to his best friend? Steve had always let him see everything he drew. It was something so natural to them.

It could've been all exaggerated. Bucky always did that, the negative conclusions forcing themselves to be what he automatically assumed. I wasn't and probably never would be the best epithet to house. Besides, wasn't it logistically hypocritical of Bucky? He had never and planned on never showing Steve anything he has ever written. He was too self-conscious about it all, too scared of what Steve would think, of what other people may think.

Writing the things he wrote was a sign of weakness, unless you made it big, and no one could screw with you, and he knew with a stubborn determination that weakness was not to held or show like a bright beacon where they lived.

Though it had to be something so deeply personal if Steve truly didn't want him to see it, Bucky's writings were personal to him. Who was he to surreptitiously or publicly judge.

"Alright," Steve began, straightening out the papers upside down with a carefulness that Bucky had never seen directed towards his works before, besides a few, namely the piece where two hands were entwined in a deeply devastating way that Bucky'd found only a short couple months ago. He knew almost instantly what vulnerability laid behind the dust of charcoal. He felt the connotations prick his heart and yearned for Steve to tell him all his suffering.

"Close your eyes." Bucky peaked out from the billowing storm in his head and he open his mouth in question. "I need to hide them." Steve stated confidently.

Bucky hunched in on himself, hiding the fragile betrayal that evolved from the notion that Steve didn't trust his friend not to look at the things that he sincerely did not want him to look at. Still, he let his lids fall and listened to the glide of Steve's socks on creaky wood.

He was back before Bucky knew it, and when Bucky opened his eyes, his friend was smiling softly, not without that tensed strain behind the furrow in his brow. The ease of their conversation walked right out the front door and left it open, inviting Bucky to tag alone.

He cleared his throat and stood up, righting his shirt. “I gotta get going.” he announced, the sadness within staying encapsulated in his head because dear deity forbid he made Steve guilty for something that was his right to keep secret.

“Come on, Buck, you just got here.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just… I got an appointment.”’

“For what?”

The buttons of his coat lost their forced attention, and Bucky looked forward, bottom lip enduring the painful ting of pressure from his teeth. “There may be an openin’ for a new job.” Straight away, his cheeks felt sore in a grueling imitation of a smile as he turned to Steve.

Walking over and ruffling his hair, Bucky said, “Don’t worry, Stevie. I wouldn't leave yah if I had to.” A wink and then Steve is patting down his unruly hair with a moue.

“What’s the job for?”

“What’s those drawin’s have on ‘em?”

Steve turned to him.

Bucky left before the apology could leave his lips and he ran to the docks.

 

 

The sun was taking a selfish vacation behind thick stratus of conglomerate ranges of grays. He took pity for anyone having to work in this condition, hisself included. A woman in a dress going down to the bottom of her knee caps was smoking against the wall that Peter deemed his for their chats.

He thought about turning around, thought of telling her it was off, that he decided not to do it, couldn’t do it. He went up to her and saw her brown locks and thick makeup, dated jewelry and pathetic looking coat, and he pulled out the money instead of canceling it all.

She looked at his listlessly, the same protection held behind her eyes he saw with the woman he gave a piece of bread to so long ago.

He was an oozing, melting wound of infection and jitters, she was the single stitch that he hoped could drown everything out for long enough for it to dissolve. The bricks behind her haloed her as if a throne for her sinful majesty.

“You’re the friend of Peter’s, r-right?”

“And _you_ are the one that wants something?” She didn’t let him his say anything. “Honey, explain to me how you’ve not caught a fish already. I know i’m good, but why me?”

“Can’t we please just- can you just take the money, please? It’s not really much, but I suppose Peter told you i’m not very well off?”

She snatched it from him. “Can I get a name?”

“...James.” It came out in a spurt of hot breath that wrapped around his throat like a giant fist, suffocating. It hurt!

“Okay, s’only cause I gotta know preferences, ya know?”

“What?”

“Do you want me to call it?”

“Call what?”

“The name… you know while we--”

She swayed on her hips heavily to show what she meant with raised eyebrows. Creased lines rippled above her brows and it reminded Bucky of the little knot of Steve’s forehead whenever he got frustrated, or concentrated, or angry, or sad, or-

“D’you need me to spell it out for you? How old are you? Jesus, don’t tell me Peter sent me no baby. Listen, s’dangerous out here as is. I can’t have this prepubescent shit littering my walks. All y’all’s mother would come find me and burn me at the stake or some shit-”

“I’m nineteen.”

“You’re nineteen?”

“Yes, I’m nineteen.”

“Well--then where d’you wanna go then, huh?”

“I-I guess somewhere private.”

“Wow, really? But I heard exibitioinism is really in with illegal prostitutes nowadays.”

“I don’t- what?”

She finally looked at him for more seconds than she did her cig, and swallowed loudly before chewing on her lip. Now, he felt she was looking for _too_ long. “Just follow me.”

He did.

“I’d advise watching out for any buddies if you don’t wanna be teased for this.”

“B-But I thought- I hear guys gossiping about gettin’- you know gettin’ laid by ones of you all the time.”

“Well, you ventured cheap, and you got used goods.” She looked a little older, but it wasn’t terribly severe. He wanted to reassure her, but his throat held a knife that wouldn’t let him speak properly, and he felt it wouldn’t do much good to put a vibrating hand on her shoulder as ‘support’ if it more or less shook her apart by sheer force.

She walked him up to a bulbous-looking car with too much rust to remember the what lay beneath, and the back door creaked open like the screams within Bucky’s mind. The back upholstery was saggy and frowning, dried stains of it history crying down the ledge and into the creases.

“So be honest with me real quick?”

She stood there expectantly until he nodded.

“Have you ever slept with anyone before?”

“...No. I mean, I’ve- girls’ve given me sucks’n stuff, but-”

“Oh, dear Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Fine, okay, hop in. You can lay on your back, if that’s okay?”

“I-I mean, yeah, that’s alright. I--?”

“I could have you- you know above, but I think with the way you’re jittering like some nervous bug, it’ll take a _real_ long time.” Bucky amounted his silence to keep his chattering teeth within, wrapping themselves in the warmth of his mouth instead of facing mean reality. “One of my girls and I were planning on going to eat later so…”

“Oh.” He wordlessly got into the back.

 

In poetry, Bucky had learned the art of the sea. The way that the water, the ocean, such beautiful and natural entities held so many meaning and forms and comparisons within. And while he hated troping Steve into the description process, he could compare this to the sea. The raging and jagged ocean, the sharks wallowing underneath for prey like her long, gliding nails on his jutting ribs as he lifted his shirt above his head.

She was gentle mostly and asks him if it was okay with whatever before she did it, but it was all wrong. It was broken somewhere down the line, but he couldn’t understand where so he could fuse it back together, but even if he did, he wasn’t sure if that crumb would leave or stay somewhere deep in the creases of clothes so he could feel it forever, but not find it even as it stabbed him repeatedly.

It happened eventually after she took a while making him feel heated. He looked at the ceiling of the car, asking a fruitless question and never looking at her though he tried so hard to so many times. That was the point, to look at _her_ and stop looking at the ceiling, that damn ceiling with and unusual pattern in it. It bled through the baleful gray and snaked around in shades to make a picture that made everything run south so much quicker.

The fact that the ceiling did it made him shove a hand over his mouth in a cry. The prostitute- Had he ever gotten her name? -must’ve thought this was just a sign of satisfaction because she went up and down, her lap to his quicker, taking deep breaths herself.

It was over soon, and he sat up and hugged his torso, naked and shivering from the cold that came in from outside. She looked at him as she shimmed back into her dress. “Hey,” she said softly, leaning in, “You should get dressed. It’s pretty damn cold out.”

He looked back at her.

“Also, won’t be long before another couple comes here.” She frowned. The stains now fouly made much more sense.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Thank you.”

 

 

Bucky walked into the house with an ashen face that blurred as Steve woke up. It was dark out and the crickets sang loudly right out the window. He glanced at Steve blankly before grabbing the book Steve gave him from the counter and shoving it in his large coat pocket.

“I forgot it earlier.”

“I hope the job interview went well.” Steve blurted out because he needed to.

Bucky slowly looked at him, face never shifting. He spoke. “Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.” Steve said automatically. For that face showed something and Steve just had to apologize.

Bucky took a deep breath before walking out into the world again.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, the ending was hard to write, albiet not going to be the worse thing I will write for this...
> 
> Not much to say but...  
> Sorry for the lisp portion in the aspects of readibility. I wanted the lisp to be picked up, but I know it can be a bit disorienting. If there's a more effective way to implemetn a lisp in a work, please help me out.
> 
> Gary Cooper and Tyron Powers were hot celebrities during the 30s. Powers in the 1st photo above, and Cooper the second, and I dont know if it's just me imagining things, but Cooper looks a lil like buffed up Steve... idk. :)


End file.
